We support increased use of wood-based products across construction and other applications through the development and maintenance of key standards, codes and handbooks.
Forest & Wood Products Australia (FWPA) supports the development, adoption and promotion of standards that strengthen confidence in using wood products in Australia’s built environment.
While FWPA works on behalf of industry members across the entire forest and wood products value chain, our dedicated platform WoodSolutions focuses specifically on
supporting architects, engineers, designers and building professionals with practical technical resources.
WoodSolutions is an FWPA initiative designed to make it easier for building professionals to specify and use wood products correctly and confidently. This includes providing access to timber design guides, technical resources, fire reports and the latest Codes and Standards relevant to wood in construction.
To ensure users can easily find the most up-to-date technical information, all timber-related information in relation to Codes and Standards are hosted on the WoodSolutions website.
Visit WoodSolutions to access the full library of Codes and Standards resources for timber design and construction. Contact our Codes & Standards team via this link.
This Manual details FWPA policies and procedures in developing and maintaining Australian Timber Products and Related Standards within its scope of operation. Standards within the meaning of this Manual includes Standards, Handbooks, Guides, and other related documents.
Documents produced within the scope of this Manual may be forwarded to Standards Australia for publication as Australian Standards and may be developed using the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) National Construction Code (NCC) “Protocol for the Development of National Construction Code Referenced Documents” for referencing as an NCC referenced document.
FWPA will consider requests to develop Standards, or similar documents, based on the proposed scope of work, industry support, demonstrated need, and available FWPA resources.
To assist with this process, a FWPA Standards Proposal Form has been prepared to enable projects to be critically reviewed and considered by FWPA’s Standards Reference Panel (SRP). Based on the SRP’s deliberations, advice will be provided to FWPA’s National Codes & Standards Manager regarding priority of development.
If you would like to propose a standard, please complete the form and email it to boris.iskra@fwpa.com.au for consideration by the SRP.
Learn more about FWPA’s current activities in the Codes & Standards space, including:
FWPA submitted a number of Proposal-for-Change (PFC) requests to the Australian Building Codes Board’s (ABCB) which were accepted and resulted in changes to the National Construction Code Volume One (NCC).
FWPA conducted Research & Development in support of the NCC mid-rise timber building code changes.
FWPA actively participates in various Standards Australia’s committee with one of these being FP-020 Construction of buildings in bushfire-prone areas.
FWPA funded the development of a Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) software package to provide designers and building authorities with a more accurate approach to the assigning of BALs and to remove some of the unnecessary penalties, and associated costs, with building in bushfire-prone areas.
This document (including AS/NZS 4490:2011) provides background and guidance to support the use of a suite of Australian/New Zealand Standards.
This draft Standard has been developed to be used as an Industry Testing Standard, as an alternative to using AS 1649 (2025) for the testing and determination of characteristic capacities for specific types of commonly used connections, for sawn timber and all engineered wood products, until AS 1649 (2025) has been thoroughly revised in years to come.
Public comment period
The public comment period for this Standard is open from 31 October 2025 to 30 November 2025, allowing all relevant industry members and potential users to review and provide feedback.
Comments can be provided via the FWPA public comments online form below or downloading the excel spreadsheet when providing more detailed comments. Download excel here
Save the completed excel spreadsheet to your computer and email to claudia.roder@fwpa.com.au
