Entrepreneurial Dominion

               T.J. Daly

High Tech, High Timber

The timberwrights at Dreaming Creek join computer-aided design and manufacturing with 2,000-year-old construction techniques to build some of the best timber frame houses in the world.

To understand where Dreaming Creek Timber Frame Homes, Inc., comes from, you must hearken back to the craft guilds of the Middle Ages. An employee joining the company starts as an apprentice, works his way up to journeyman and master, and then tops out as a master timberwright. The training takes five years minimum, though it really never ends. Several of the master craftsmen at Dreaming Creek have been in the business more than 20 years.

But to comprehend where Dreaming Creek is heading, you need to visit its beamery, a facility in the tiny mountain town of Floyd, where heavy beams of timber are sized and shaped. Designers massage architectural renderings with up to three different types of CAD-CAM software, and then feed the data to a numerically controlled cutting machine. Once the timbers have been cut with extreme precision, the timberwrights finish the job by sanding, staining, touching up spots the machine can’t reach and, as appropriate, adding their own hand-carved finishes.

“The recurring theme across the organization is an incredible passion for wood and timber framing, a passion for craftsmanship and excellence,” says T.J. Daly, who took over as CEO of the company early this year. His job, adds the former investment banker and venture capitalist, is to overlay that dedication to the timberframing craft with 21st century technology and business systems and, in the process, take the company to the next level in size and profitability.

Dreaming Creek started two decades ago as Shortridge Construction. Founder Bob Shortridge took the conventional home building business in a novel direction when he built his own home using a timber-frame design. Unlike so-called stick-built houses built with two-by-fours, which came into widespread use only in the post WW II era, timber frame construction joins heavy beams with joint-and-peg techniques devised ages ago. Unlike stick-built houses, in which wallboard covers all the wood, timber frame houses display the beams proudly.

Shortridge became so enamored with the technique that he enrolled in a course run by Ted Benson, the modern-day evangelist who reintroduced timber-frame construction to the United States, and proceeded to specialize in the technique. Based in Powhatan County, just outside of Richmond, he outsourced much of his work to some old-school wood workers in Floyd County. As the volume picked up, he brought them into the business.

Shortridge busted into the big leagues among timber-frame builders 14 years ago when he landed what was the biggest timber-frame construction job in the United States to that time: a 20,000-square-foot mountain palace for Alan Ashton, the multi-millionaire developer of WordPerfect software. For that job, Dreaming Creek dispatched a team of timberwrights from Virginia to Sundance, Utah, to assemble 1,700 timbers and fit 3,400 joints. The company was the only one of 120 sub-contractors to finish on-time and on-budget with no change orders.

The Ashton job proved that Dreaming Creek could deliver the goods for the most demanding of projects, opening doors to major architects and developers. Shortridge had been trying unsuccessfully to recruit a CEO to help grow the company when he met T.J. Daly.

Coming off a stint with Monument Capital, a venture capital fund formed near the peak of the dotcom bubble that unwound when tech markets collapsed, Daly was looking for a different kind of experience. In his time off, the pinstriped financier happened to be an amateur wood worker himself – he’d hand crafted the furniture in his childrens’ bedrooms. While doing some M&A consulting for the firm, he and Shortridge talked at length about the future of the company. “At every turn,” says Daly, “we seemed to mesh.”

Taking the CEO position, Daly now shares an office with Shortridge on the founder’s 70-acre farm in Powhatan. The main office is a timber barn, raised in 1985, by the company’s early employees. Also at the facility is a sawmill where Dreaming Creek turns hardwood logs into cants, or timber with four smooth sides. From there, Dreaming Creek ships the timbers to Floyd for the detail work.

Dreaming Creek serves the upper end of the housing market, primarily in resort and mountain communities where the rustic wood-and-stone building style plays well. Timberframe homes are more expensive than stick-built structures, Daly readily concedes, though not as much as one might think. For starters, they are stronger. Dreaming Creek has engineered its houses to meet snow load requirements – up to 320 pounds per square foot – prevailing in Western resort communities, as well as the seismic zone four standards of the Salt Lake City area, one of its major markets. Stick-built houses can meet the codes as well, but only by adding “lots of sticks and steel.” Also, because timber columns and rafters don’t mix well with crown molding and other traditional finishes, so home builders can save a lot by dispensing with the trim work required to hide drywall corners.

Because Dreaming Creek pre-cuts and pre-assembles its timber in Floyd, the company spends less time on the construction site, significantly cutting construction time. In many of the Western resort communities where it sells its timber, says Daly, heavy snowfalls often shut down construction sites when the local workforce heads for the slopes. As temporary transplants, by contrast, the Dreaming Creek crew is interested in finishing the job as quickly as possible and heading home.

“Dreaming Creek builds timber frame homes better than anyone else in the country,” Daly asserts. But the business processes were only “middle of the road.” While Shortridge attends to the side of the business he loves – building houses – it's Daly's job to put the technology and business systems into place.

Daly’s first focus was upgrading the company’s information technology capabilities. He outfitted the Floyd facility with high-speed, wireless Internet access, installed business servers in Powhatan and Floyd, brought in state-of-the-art CAD-CAM software and integrated the design process with the wood-cutting machine.

The embrace of technology imposes a new obligation on the timberwrights. “Once you’ve become a master timberwright,” says Daly, “the next step is to get involved in the computer side of the business.” At the highest levels of the craft, artisanship merges with engineering. Fitting three timbers together may look simple on paper, but they have to be cut so that the joints are strong enough to handle the load. Familiarity with engineering principles and PC programs is a major bonus.

Daly also hopes to supplement the timberwrights’ decades of experience with scientific knowledge. He’s established a strong relationship with the Virginia Tech Department of Wood Sciences to study the air drying of different types of wood and its impact in timberframe construction. Because fir is a common wood out West, Dream Creek ships significant quantities from Canada to Powhatan for cutting and kiln drying. But the ambient moisture content in Virginia is higher than Utah, with the result that the wood can shrink, pop, crack and twist after it’s been installed. Daly hopes that Virginia Tech can help the company solve what amounts to a significant quality control problem.

The timber-frame business is flooded with competitors. While Shortridge and the timber wrights build upon the company’s reputation for quality, Daly wants to market the company’s capabilities more aggressively. His goal is to build formal relationships with major Western resort developers and architects, where the major markets are. But he’s also determined to expand the East Coast business as well. Daly hopes to penetrate the market in Asheville, N.C., now the hottest retirement community in the entire United States, and is in the early stages of building a network of dealers who can handle sales, client management and “raising,” as the timber wrights refer to the erection of a building’s timber framework.

Daly finds the timber frame business highly rewarding. He loves the craftsmanship and beauty of the work, and he sees numerous opportunities to expand the business. Shortridge is 48 years old and he is 34, he says. “One of my goals for the business,” he says, “to have it outlive the two of us.”

-- September 15, 2004

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