In Conversation: William Silva, Director | Swinerton

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.

You’re working on a CLT manufacturing facility. How is that going to work within the web of entities, and what are the opportunities?

Coming at it from the builder side, we really studied the supply chain. What we saw first was that the market had only three large-format beam saws in North America. If you had beams deeper than 24 inches, you were sending them to Canada to be cut. And that was true of a couple of the early mass timber buildings. Precision fabrication is a key piece. And so that large-format beam saw was our first investment. 

Opening our fabrication facility in Greenville, we sized it for what we see [as] the growth potential of mass timber within North America and the U.S. Our glulam fabrication, our investment in a sawmill that will provide planning operations for our CLT factory really started to happen in 2024, but we are continuing to invest to scale those operations to support the capacity needed within the industry and address that supply chain piece. 

Millersburg will come on line in early 2027 and really start to address the CLT market.

What do you see as the biggest opportunities in mass timber right now?

There will continue to be innovation within mass timber, but we’re at an inflection point where things will start to scale and seek efficiency. There’s a lot of innovation in alternative products, ways to be more efficient in connection details, [and] market sectors. We’re seeing the majority of the buildings being in smaller structures and we’re really helping people understand that opportunity where we’re doing one- and two-story structures for projects.

Do you see any specific markets where we are likely to start seeing more mass timber in the next year or two?

Part of what we do on that advocacy piece is work to support market studies to provide better information. [It’s] about identifying the levers: What are the levers that I need to throw, and what are the levers that I can help others see that they have the opportunity to throw within mass timber.

There are things happening that will be structural shifts in mass timber—that will significantly alter what’s happening with mass timber and the manufacturing capacity. When you talk about industrial applications, there [are] exciting opportunities for what it can be, because some of the more significant projects that you start talking about—250,000 to 350,000 square feet of CLT going into a facility—will alter the landscape. We’re very bullish on what the opportunities are in mass timber, particularly in the East and Central U.S.

Architects are always looking to get creative with mass timber. What opportunities do you see for them?

Steel can be out a quarter inch in 10 feet and still be [within] tolerance. With mass timber, you’re playing with an eighth of an inch or a 16th of an inch. How tight do you want your gaps to be? How does your connection detail affect the plumbness of a building when you’re dealing with something that tight? That’s where it gets exciting: What’s our strategy for the building envelope? How are we going to panelize that and bring it into the delivery? 

There’s so much opportunity to get creative alongside the architect. That stimulates my mind in an amazing way and it builds relationships. When I work on a mass timber project with a client or an architect, you become fast friends. Thirty-six years into my career, it’s exciting and fun. And it motivates me.