In Conversation: William Silva, Director | Swinerton

Concord, California-based Swinerton recently named William Silva the director of its new National Mass Timber Center of Excellence. The cross-functional initiative aims to integrate the firm more closely with its mass timber affiliate, Timberlab.

Swinerton and Timberlab have constructed more than 80 mass timber projects nationwide, with an additional 30 in design or under construction. The companies already have mass timber fabrication facilities in Portland, Oregon, and Greenville, South Carolina; they acquired two glulam manufacturing facilities in Oregon in 2024 and a new 192,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for cross-laminated timber—itself built from mass timber—is expected to come online in Millersburg, Oregon, next year.

Silva recently sat down with Think Wood to discuss how Swinerton is investing in manufacturing to position mass timber for broader adoption.

Think Wood: What is the new National Mass Timber Center of Excellence?

William Silva: The Center of Excellence acts to integrate the strengths of the Timberlab team and the builder’s team because working together, we can make the structural frame of a mass timber building highly efficient.

[The Center] is a separate entity that works with both sides to enhance outcomes and help solve the equations for project delivery. We know how to leverage Timberlab in a way that demonstrates our experience. It allows us to centralize our expertise and provide leadership; drive innovation and collaboration within project teams; and help people better understand how to remove barriers and what levers can be thrown to continue to increase the adoption of mass timber as a solution for buildings.

At the end of the day, Swinerton has 18 vertical market sectors that we work within—aviation, healthcare, education, higher education, public, civic, etc.—and we’re continuing to focus on removing barriers to implementation within those market sectors. And as we work within those market sectors across the country, we can address geographic differences in how project delivery models work.

Stepping into this national role is so enriching because as an employee-owned company, it allows us to leverage the strengths of each other and everybody’s invested in mutual success and outcome.

Why mass timber?

There were many things that we found in our first mass timber project. It was 4% cheaper than structural steel and four months faster. We saw a lot of opportunity for how it could transform how we deliver projects. We’re at over 80 projects now complete between Swinerton and Timberlab, and it continues to expand and accelerate.

Our approach with Timberlab started out of Swinerton, then Swinerton Mass Timber. As we got into fabrication and as we move more and more into vertical integration within the services that Timberlab provides, it allows us to address constraints in the supply chain, de-risk projects, and accelerate implementation.

We find [that] a builder with experience in mass timber understands not only how to unlock the speed of the structure, but how to integrate the building systems, take advantage of prefabrication opportunities offsite, [and] integrate with the precision of a mass timber structure that can leverage being at a 16th of an inch tolerance. Unlocking those strengths give us the ability to have projects deliver at better than 20–30% speed improvement over business as usual.

What’s your background and what will you do in your new role?

I really feel blessed to have had a career that has been well-rounded in experiences and focused on being a builder. That’s why I feel at home with Swinerton. A significant portion of my career was doing development management and working on the owner side. Understanding that aspect and how to bring balance into projects [has] allowed me to focus on how I support a team to bring value, how the team interprets value.

A lot of what I do now as national director is provide strategic insight that reflects project delivery and how we engage with our owners in a different way. We’re trying to provide services as a trusted advisor; how do we bring project success, particularly with mass timber?

[With] mass timber, the aesthetics are the easy piece. The other pieces are the challenging ones, but that’s where I get excited about teams coming together. How do we solve for it?

There’s been so much innovation in the last year. Both Swinerton and Timberlab are heavily invested with organizations like the REACTS Consortium at [the Tallwood Design Institute at] Oregon State University and the Institute for Health in the Built Environment at the University of Oregon, as well as working with the University of Arkansas and other places to provide industry feedback to focus academic research in a way that allows for continued barrier removal or better understanding of material performance, which ultimately allows plan examiners and jurisdictions to be comfortable with something that they may not have worked with before.