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• Truss plant tours give those outside our industry a chance to experience our component manufacturing industry and change their perceptions.
• A truss plant tour is easy to give a group presentation about. Just use your passion, your profession and your expertise!

Talking Points: • WTCA staff is very interested in assisting our membership with developing relationship with both state and federal lawmakers. • It is very important to establish these relationships in the lawmaker’s district as well as in DC. • When meeting with your lawmakers it is important to be yourself and talk about what you know and avoid the three Ts.

• The U.S. lumber producers are in general the high cost producers when compared to their foreign counterparts.
• The softwood lumber tariff creates a two-tiered lumber market that allows Canadian component manufacturers to buy lumber cheaper than their U.S. counterparts, creating a competitive advantage when shipping to the U.S.

• The editorial focus of this issue is Design & Engineering Advancements.
• The market continues to drive component manufacturers to take on more building design functions.
• The truss manufacturing business is very challenging, yet has the ability to also be very rewarding through helping people and seeing the fruit of one’s labor.

• Whole house design continues to be the talk of our industry. What does it mean to your business?
• Today’s builders are actually land developers; the sooner they are done developing the sooner they get a return on their investment.
• Builders are increasingly asking for turnkey solutions to their primary land development problem: housing.

• Wood allowable stress design, used extensively by the truss industry, does note change significantly in the 2005 NDS.
• One of the key features of the 2005 NDS is the work done to make the NDS more consistent in terminology and clarify sections that have been known to be confusing in the past. 
• The 2005 NDS has very minimal impact on allowable stress design and has the added benefit of having a transparent approach to learning and using load and resistance factor design.

• Positions in the Stark program at Marion Correctional Institute (MCI) are coveted among inmates.
• Inmates that participate in the program are promised the opportunity of a fresh start after they get out of prison.
• Stark leadership believes that the program addresses a chronic shortage of truss technicians in the industry while providing felons a chance to learn a valuable skill to apply as they reintegrate into society after their release.

• One of the three educational tracks for component manufacturers will spotlight customer relations: Building Relation-ships for Business Growth. 
• Industry veterans Mike Ruede, Joe Hikel and Craig Plummer will each present one session within the track. 
• BCMC sessions and the concepts covered within them are created by component manufacturers for component manufacturers.

• Thirty states, Washington DC, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the National Park Service and the U.S. Virgin Islands have adopted the IBC.
• Twenty-seven states, Washington DC and the U.S. Virgin Islands have adopted the IRC.
• While monitoring state, regional or local code activities may sound as fun as watching paint dry, the effect of bad code adoption can be profound.
• Our industry goal is to facilitate an effective monitoring process. The more knowledge we have, the more power we will have in shaping our industry’s future.

• This issue of SBC Magazine focuses on Legal & Legislative issues.
• The majority of the building components industry feels they have little or no control over things like the transportation regulations.
• Can local advocacy be worth the work? One WTCA chapter believes it is. Read Adventures in Advocacy to learn how they rallied for change.