Mass Timber Lifting Design

Rigging and Lifting Engineering That Gets Heavy Timber Off the Truck and Into the Structure — Safely

A mass timber panel can be manufactured to perfect tolerances, detailed flawlessly, and delivered on schedule — and none of it matters if it gets damaged or dropped on the way into the building. Mass timber members are big, heavy, and surprisingly easy to harm: a panel picked from the wrong points can crack, a finished glulam beam can be crushed or marred by careless rigging, and an exposed member that arrives beautiful can show up at its final position with damage that no longer hides. Worse, an improperly engineered lift is a genuine safety risk to the crew underneath it. At Lam-Wood Systems Inc., our licensed Professional Engineers design the lifting and rigging plans that get heavy timber and panelized mass timber safely off the truck, through the air, and into place — protecting the material, the schedule, and the people doing the work.

Lifting engineering is one of the most overlooked scopes on a mass timber project, right up until the morning the crane shows up and someone realizes there’s no plan for how to pick a forty-foot panel without cracking it. Mass timber’s whole value proposition — fast erection, prefabricated efficiency, exposed beauty — depends on getting these members into place quickly and without damage. That doesn’t happen by improvising at the hook. It happens because someone engineered the pick: the lift points, the rigging, the hardware, and the sequence, all worked out before the panel ever leaves the ground.

What We Engineer

Lifting and rigging engineering for mass timber covers everything between the delivery truck and the final connected position. Our team handles the full scope, engineered to the specific members, site, and erection sequence of your project.

Lift Point and Pick Plan Design. Where you attach to a timber member determines whether it lifts cleanly or stresses in ways it was never meant to. We engineer lift points and complete pick plans that respect how the member carries load during the lift — accounting for the fact that a panel lying flat and a panel hanging in the air experience completely different stresses.

Rigging and Hardware Engineering. The slings, spreader bars, lifting beams, and connection hardware all have to be sized and arranged for the real weights and geometries involved. We engineer the rigging configuration and specify or design the lifting hardware — including connections into the timber that carry the lift load without damaging the member.

Panel and CLT Lifting. Panelized mass timber — CLT and Mass Ply products like those from our partner Freres Engineered Wood — brings its own lifting challenges, since large flat panels are awkward, heavy, and prone to bending stresses during the pick. We design the lifting solutions that get these panels vertical or airborne and set without cracking or deflection damage.

Temporary Lifting Connections. Sometimes the cleanest lift uses temporary attachment points that come off after the member is set — avoiding permanent marks on exposed timber. We engineer these temporary lifting connections to carry the load safely and leave the finished surface intact.

Erection Sequence Support. A lift never happens in isolation; it’s one move in a sequence, and the structure has to be stable at every step. We engineer lifting plans that account for the erection sequence and the temporary stability of the partially built structure — work that ties directly into our broader construction support capabilities.

Why Lifting Mass Timber Is Its Own Discipline

Lifting heavy timber isn’t like lifting steel, and treating it the same way is how members get damaged. Steel shrugs off rough handling; finished mass timber doesn’t. An exposed glulam beam or an architectural-grade panel carries its final finished surface into the building — there’s no cladding coming later to hide a gouge or a crushed edge. The lift has to protect that surface. Beyond aesthetics, the members experience real structural stress during a pick that’s entirely different from their in-service condition: a panel that’s plenty strong as a floor can be vulnerable to bending when hoisted flat from the wrong points. Engineering the lift means understanding those temporary conditions and designing for them specifically.

That understanding comes from years on the material side of mass timber. We’ve supplied and detailed the glulam, heavy timber, and CLT and mass plywood panels that these lifts are moving — so we know how heavy they really are, how they’re finished, and where they’re vulnerable. Every lifting plan we produce is stamped and sealed by a licensed Professional Engineer, defensible to the crane operator, the safety officer, and the building official alike.

Part of a Complete Mass Timber Practice

Lifting design is the final step in getting mass timber from drawing to standing structure, and it works best when it’s connected to the engineering on either side of it. The members being lifted are joined by the connections our Mass Timber Connection Design team engineers — and because the same people handle both, the lift plan and the connection details actually account for each other. The temporary stability and sequencing that lifting depends on draw on our Construction Support Engineering service. And where timber meets steel, our Steel Connection Design expertise rounds out a practice that covers the entire mass timber build under one roof.

That continuity matters most on erection day, when the connection details, the lift plan, and the sequence all have to agree. When they’re engineered by separate firms, the gaps surface at the worst possible moment — with a crane on the clock. When they come from one team, they fit.

Who We Work With

Mass timber erectors and crane crews rely on us for lift plans that are safe, sealed, and actually executable in the field. General contractors and construction managers bring us in to de-risk erection day and protect expensive, long-lead timber members from damage. Mass timber suppliers and fabricators partner with us so their product arrives and installs without harm. And safety officers and building officials want exactly what we deliver: a stamped, defensible lifting plan. Whoever’s responsible for getting timber into the air, we make the lift work.

Engineer Your Mass Timber Lifts With Lam-Wood

The lift is the moment of maximum risk for an expensive, finished, long-lead timber member — and it’s too important to improvise at the hook. With licensed Professional Engineers, real material experience, and a complete mass timber practice behind every plan, Lam-Wood Systems Inc. designs the lifting and rigging that protects your members, your crew, and your schedule. This is part of our full structural engineering practice. Contact our engineering team or call 303-458-1736 to get your mass timber lifts engineered right.