Timberline Panel Company, LLC.
Tom Harrison
Growing up in a family of loggers and foresters in northern Minnesota, Tom Harrison is rooted in the wood product industry. Childhood and teenage memories include hand-peeling aspen logs with his uncles. When he went off to college, Tom supported himself through a millwright apprenticeship at Blandin Paper Mill and began to gain a broader perspective of wood and timber products.Shortly after graduating from Bemidji State University, Tom worked for Blandin Wood Products, the first oriented strand board (OSB) facility in the US, for whom he would become the Director of Marketing. Through his involvement with OSB Tom gained a keen understanding for the practicality and promise of Structural Insulated Panels. OSB is the structural component of SIPs, and Tom kept an eye on the SIP industry from its earliest stages. The insulation value of the SIPs, combined with the ease of installation, made a believer out of Tom long before SIPs became a widely accepted building alternative to conventional construction. His belief in SIPs was so strong that he accepted a position as General Manager of a SIP manufacturer in the northeast. Within five years the company grew ten-fold and became the largest SIP manufacturer in the US. Tom ultimately was appointed Executive Vice President.
His time there exposed him to timber framing. Tom admired the strength and beauty of timber framing as well as its complementary nature to the super-insulated SIPs. Tom was instrumental in the development of techniques for utilizing SIPs in the construction of timber frame structures. In 1993, he partnered up with timber frame guru Paul Martin, and Vermont Timber Frames was born. Hundreds of satisfied clients later, VTF is now one of the most widely-respected companies in their field. Over the years, VTF worked with several of the top SIP providers in the country to provide their clients with strong, beautiful, and energy-efficient building envelopes. Tom and Paul have collaborated on efforts to not only produce the finest timber frames possible, but to fine-tune the integration of SIPs with timber framing. It was only a matter of time before Tom applied the best elements of his extensive experience to a SIP company of his own.
Timberline Panels has streamlined the process for SIP application in residential and light commercial structures. Our employees have experience working with SIPs both as an independent building system and as a complementary system alongside timber framing, laminated beams, or steel. Tom’s belief in quality raw materials, state-of-the-art production technology, and an accessible and knowledgeable support staff resonates throughout Timberline in a way that’s possible only in a company where the owner is also the General Manager.
