Case Study: Bush Bohlman & Partners reduces embodied carbon and streamlines hybrid timber design with Altair's S-TIMBER

Reducing the Carbon Footprint with Embedded Carbon for Large Scale, Hybrid Timber Structures

Bush Bohlman & Partners, a Vancouver-based structural engineering firm known for mass timber and tall wood buildings, was tasked with the structural analysis and timber design for the BCIT student plaza — a hybrid CLT canopy with steel and CLT columns, pitched roof, skylights and cantilevering panels. They needed to meet sustainability goals and local timber design codes while iterating models rapidly as stakeholder requirements evolved, so they engaged Altair and used Altair’s S-TIMBER product.

Altair collaborated with Bush Bohlman & Partners to model and analyze the full 3D hybrid timber-steel structure in S-TIMBER, leveraging hybrid analysis, customizable material databases, modeling automation and strip-line integration to extract junction demands and design connections. The solution enabled simulation of complex two‑way bending, automated code checks, concise design reports, 3D visualization and CAD export — reducing manual element design, speeding review cycles and producing fabrication-ready outputs for the project.

Bush Bohlman & Partners

Trevor Whitney

Partner, Structural Engineer