Mortenson Credits Mass Timber With $2M Savings on WWU Hall

Mortenson saved $2 million on the $55 million Kaiser Borsari Hall at Western Washington University by building in mass timber instead of steel — and the savings began with deleting the basement. The contractor detailed the results in a case study on the four-story project in Bellingham, Washington.

The key move was relocating the building's electrical room from the basement to the first floor. Because mass timber imposes a lighter load than steel, the design no longer needed a basement foundation at all, according to the case study. Eliminating that foundation produced the $2 million in savings and significantly cut concrete usage across the project.

Early BIM involvement and prefabricated components reduced the project timeline by 25%, the case study states.

Beyond the basement elimination, Mortenson applied other value engineering strategies. The team switched to a variable refrigerant flow HVAC system and optimized the sewer routing, Gianna Bacher, associate sustainability specialist with Mortenson, told Construction Dive via email.

Mass timber also trimmed labor costs. The material can be prefabricated offsite and requires no welded connections, so fewer workers were needed on the jobsite, Bacher said. Reduced concrete usage meant fewer truckloads and site deliveries as well.

The schedule gains were real, not theoretical. Jennifer Kim, project executive for Mortenson, said the construction and design team expedited the mass timber installation by about two months.

Paige Nowoj, a Seattle-based Mortenson project manager who worked on the project, said contractors considering mass timber must weigh schedule and environment first.

"Building with wood in Arizona is very different from building with wood in the Pacific Northwest," Nowoj said. "Evaluating at what time you're going to be erecting and having this material delivered and also where it's coming from is really important to bring to the conversation with owners and design teams about if mass timber is the right material for your project."

Proximity mattered on this build. The timber components came from Kalesnikoff, a sustainable forestry supplier based in British Columbia, Canada, within 600 miles of the site, according to the case study. Washington-based Tiger Construction installed the Kalesnikoff-fabricated mass timber.

To meet stringent sustainability requirements, Mortenson worked hand-in-hand with architect Perkins+Will, the university and the design team to evaluate each step of the process, per the case study. McKinstry, a mechanical contractor on the project, said the hall broke ground in 2023; it opened in early 2025.

After more than a year of operations, the building has earned Zero Carbon and Zero Energy certifications from green building nonprofit Living Future, following a 12-month performance audit.

Nowoj compared the mass timber components to Lincoln Logs for how easily they assembled.

"It was one of the easiest installs of structure I've seen, so that was really exciting because we were counting on it from a scheduled delivery standpoint to go quicker than steel, and that's exactly what was delivered," Nowoj said.

With verified zero-carbon performance and documented cost and schedule gains, Kaiser Borsari Hall gives owners a data-backed answer to the question of whether mass timber can compete with steel on price.