Adam Gerber

CEO, Principal | M.B.A., P.Eng., M.A.Sc., CPHC®
Rock Climber, Sailor, Carpenter, Caffeine addict, CCE Top 10 Under 40

“I was the youngest person on my block with a cordless drill,” Adam Gerber recalls.

That early fascination with building eventually led him from construction sites to the CEO’s office. Today, he leads ASPECT Structural Engineers, whose offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Bern, Switzerland, serve a growing market for mass timber construction across North America and Europe. Colleagues describe him as innovative, collaborative, solution-oriented, calm under pressure and “equally comfortable discussing financial reports as the pull-out strength of fasteners.”

Working with wood has been a consistent thread throughout Gerber’s career. Before and while earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in structural and earthquake engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), he worked as a carpenter, foreman, estimator, and engineer-in-training (EIT). Those experiences gave him a practical understanding of construction that continues to shape the way he approaches structural engineering today.

“As a kid, I wanted to be a builder,” he says. “I didn’t know the difference between carpentry and engineering, but I knew I wanted to be hands-on, in the action. My uncle was a carpenter and we’d build together on the weekends.”

His interest in engineering grew through high school math and science classes and a desire to apply those subjects in a practical way. Through an internship program, he job-shadowed an engineer at StructureCraft, a consulting firm known for its pioneering work in mass timber. The experience led to work terms there over the next seven years while he completed his engineering degrees. After graduation, he joined Fast + Epp as a project engineer before co-founding ASPECT Structural Engineers in 2016.

“I was the junior in the initial cohort of principals,” he explains. “We set out to become a 20-person boutique firm.”

While helping grow the young company, Gerber earned an MBA from UBC’s Sauder School of Business. He progressed from Associate Principal to Principal before becoming CEO. Under Gerber’s leadership, the firm has expanded its multidisciplinary service offering, supporting clients from concept and design through fabrication and construction support. And a decade later, ASPECT has grown to a team of more than 65 professionals with projects worldwide.

At UBC, Gerber’s graduate research focused on timber-concrete composites (TCCs) and floor vibration performance, strengthening his technical expertise while complementing the practical knowledge he had gained on construction sites. The combination of hands-on construction experience, technical research, and business leadership has shaped both his approach to engineering and the direction of the firm.

“Structural engineering is an applied science,” he says. “It isn’t just about solving technical challenges. It’s about finding thoughtful solutions that deliver the client’s vision while working within real-world constraints.”

That philosophy is evident across projects like the Malahat SkyWalk and Overhang as well as his work on North America’s first large-scale mass timber distribution warehouse. Each of Gerber’s projects reflect an emphasis on balancing architectural vision, with constructability and technical performance.

Gerber’s contributions extend beyond project work. He is a certified Passive House consultant and an active contributor to the Canadian Standards Association’s (CSA’s) task group on TCCs, which contributes updates to CSA O86, Engineering Design in Wood. He is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including BuildEx Vancouver, the World Conference on Timber Engineering and the International Mass Timber Conference. More recently, Gerber and his team began co-developing a mass timber micro-credential program with the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), helping prepare more engineers for one of the construction industry’s fastest-growing specialties.

For someone who simply wanted to build, Gerber has already built an impressive legacy. The structures themselves are only part of it. Through industry leadership, a commitment to better project delivery, a fearlessness to challenge the status quo, and a passion for knowledge-sharing, he is helping shape the future of structural engineering.