Why companies join the Structural Timber Association

1. STA Assure: credibility that shows up in specification decisions

STA Assure is the association’s quality assurance scheme, and it carries weight because it’s recognised. Since January 2019, NHBC has accepted STA Assure Gold members as compliant with Chapter 6.2 of its assessment process without a separate HB2445 review. Six other warranty and building control bodies formally recognise the scheme too: LABC Warranty, Premier Guarantee, Protek Warranty, Build-Zone Warranty, Self-Build Zone Warranty and ABC+ Warranty. Accreditation also mandates compliance with the STA’s Site Safe registration programme, which helps demonstrate compliance with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, and with the STA’s fire during construction guidance, known as the 16 Steps.

STA Assure members can access fire-tested frame elements drawn from more than 20 frame designs the STA has already tested, a resource that isn’t available outside membership. If a member has a novel frame design that hasn’t been tested, the STA can facilitate testing in collaboration with other members, which spreads a cost that would be difficult for a single firm to absorb alone.

Members are required to register projects on the STA Site Safe portal to demonstrate CDM 2015 compliance directly. And the recognition isn’t confined to industry. STA Assure is respected by government as well as by warranty providers.

The commercial effect of all this is straightforward. A non-member has to prove competency to every warranty provider, insurer and building control officer individually, on every project. An STA Assure member starts those conversations from a position the market already recognises.

2. A seat in the room where the market gets shaped

The STA played a direct role in developing the Government’s Timber in Construction Policy Roadmap and continues to lead on its implementation, working alongside the Confederation of Timber Industries. The roadmap was reaffirmed by Environment Minister in early 2025, and it sets the agenda on embodied carbon data, domestic timber supply and fire safety, the issues that determine how much regulatory friction the sector faces over the next decade.

The STA also maintains direct working connections with government departments including DEFRA and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and keeps members updated on what the Building Safety Act 2023 requires in practice. For a member firm, that means regulatory change tends to arrive as guidance on what to do next, rather than as a surprise. Individual firms, even large ones, rarely get this kind of direct access on their own.

3. Skills and training

Skills shortages, driven by a lack of new entrants into the building trade, remain a barrier to scaling timber construction. The STA is tackling this by working with institutions like NHBC to grow uptake of the skill, and by rolling out CPD and online training programmes to upskill tradespeople new to, and already in the industry. Members get free access to two to three in-person Fire During Construction training sessions a year, and to two technical conferences annually, where the sector’s own detail gets discussed rather than marketed.

The STA is also building out a set of six CPD courses. Two are already live, the Installer Training Scheme (ITS) and the Designer Training Scheme (DTS), with the remainder in development, alongside a series of six sustainability webinars. All of this is free to members. Non-members can access the same courses but need to pay for them.

Members also get access to the STA Training Portal, which holds the full set of training collateral for installers and designers in one place, which keeps sector-specific training guidance current. On the apprenticeship side, the STA supports NHBC’s Level 2 Apprenticeship in Construction Assembly and Installation for Timber Frame and supporting the NHBC with the dedicated Timber Frame training hub, including on-site professional development for the tutors delivering it. In addition, the STA sources and works with reputable training providers to deliver workplace-assessed qualifications, helping to maintain high standards of competence and consistency across the timber construction workforce.

4. Technical support

The STA holds a technical library of more than 137 documents, including the Fire safety in use Pattern Book, and it’s kept current rather than left to go out of date. Among the most used documents are:

• 16 steps to fire safety
• Pattern book: Structural timber buildings fire safety** Members Only
• Design guide: Separating distances
• Mass timber buildings: Fire safety
• Cavity barriers and fire stopping
• Moisture management strategy
• Design guide: Separating distances CLT
• Site safe: Risk assessment checklist
• Differential movement
• Product Paper 4: defining and creating structures with enhanced fire performance **Members only

Fire testing is expensive, often too expensive for a single firm to commission alone. The STA carries it out on members’ behalf, and members can then use that test data directly, a real saving on a cost that would otherwise sit entirely with the manufacturer. Members also get a technical helpline and what the STA positions as industry-leading technical support: someone to call with an actual question about a build detail, rather than a generic enquiries inbox.

The STA also supply market regulatory information to advance the use of structural timber, which gives members insight into where the material and the standards around it is heading, rather than leaving each firm to track that on its own.

One detail worth knowing specifically: elements of the Volume 1 Pattern Book can only be used on projects where the structural timber elements are supplied by an STA member. That’s not a general resource available to the wider industry. It’s a system that only works if the manufacturer supplying it is a member, which gives membership a direct commercial edge on any project that specifies Pattern Book systems.

5. A network that spans the whole supply chain

STA membership sits across five segments: structural timber system manufacturers and integrators, specialist timber design and engineers, erectors and installers, product supply chain firms, and stakeholders such as housebuilders, insurers, warranty providers, law firms and architects. Local authorities, housing associations, government departments, colleges and universities can join as associates, free of charge.

Members also get a company profile listed on the STA website, so being found by the rest of the industry isn’t left entirely to a firm’s own marketing budget, and access to STA market research, so members aren’t relying on guesswork about where the sector is heading. This is presented to members twice a year at a free event. The market analysis spans the entire timber industry. That range matters because structural timber projects tend to succeed or fail on collaboration happening early, before design decisions lock in structural layouts that manufacturers then must work around. Being in the same association as the engineers, warranty providers and housing associations a member firm needs to reach makes that early conversation easier to start.

6. Marketing and promotion

Membership also does some of a manufacturer’s visibility work for it. The STA promotes timber construction through its own publications, events and marketing activity, and a firm’s membership sits inside that, rather than needing to be built entirely from its own budget. Because the STA is a recognised, independent voice on structural timber, its promotion of the sector’s benefits carries weight with clients in a way a manufacturer’s own marketing can’t fully replicate on its own, and membership aligns a firm with that recognised authority rather than leaving it as one voice among many with no collective standing. The importance of STA Assure and using STA members is promoted to trade press and also in digital campaigns. Supply chain members get the opportunity to meet and showcase products directly to the customers (a segment of our membership base).

7. Additional benefits

• STA Annual Conference: free to attend, with direct access to industry leaders rather than reading about them second-hand.
• Market Intelligence session: free, held once a year, giving members a working overview of what’s happening across the timber frame market, not just their own segment of it.

Membership at a glance

Benefits by membership type

Most of what the STA offers is a genuine general benefit, available across all five segments. A handful of benefits are tied to a specific segment because of what that segment does, for example STA Assure accreditation sits with manufacturers and installers because they’re the ones being audited and certified. The grid below sets out which is which.

Membership segments

Benefits by membership type