Global Leadership Forum for Construction Engineering and Management Conference

Professor Mike Kagioglou is Dean of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield. He was previously at the University of Salford where he was the Head of the School of Built Environment. Mike's career spans Engineering, Manufacturing, Creativity, Design, Architecture and the Built Environment, engaged in inter and multi-disciplinary research at a global level. He was an Academic Director for the £11M EPSRC funded interdisciplinary IMRC in Health and Care Infrastructures Research and Innovation Centre (HaCIRIC) and was previously the Director of the £8M EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) Salford Centre for Research and Innovation (SCRI) in the built and human environment. Mike has published more than 200 academic referred papers, industrial reports and two books. His current research is around Healthcare infrastructure and better decision making in complex settings, following an outcome/benefits based philosophy – benefits realisation. Mike is board member of the Global Leadership Forum in Construction Engineering Management, Fellow and acting chair of the Chartered Institute of Building(CIOB) Innovation and Research Committee, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and a board member of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB). 

For almost 30 years, Professor Abourizk and his research team have focused on advancing simulation modelling for improved project management and control of large-scale construction projects, resulting in the foundation of several long-standing industrial research partnerships and in the development of numerous simulation tools and strategies that have been implemented throughout the industrial construction sector. Partnering with 40 organizations and receiving over $4.5 million in research funding from industry alone, the success and distinctiveness of Dr Abourizk’s research program are a consequence of building strong industrial research partnerships focused on advancing research, teaching, and overall practice. This collaborative approach has garnered widespread support from numerous funding agencies, policy makers, and industrial practitioners and has been instrumental in the expansion of the University of Alberta’s Hole School of Construction Engineering into one of the most reputable and well-respected Construction Engineering and Management programs in North America.

Jeffrey S. Russell is the Vice Provost for Lifelong Learning, Dean of Division of Continuing Studies, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison). In his role as Vice Provost for Lifelong Learning, Dr Russell is responsible for leading the university’s programmes and services for lifelong learners and non-traditional students. Prior to assuming this position, Dr Russell served as Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at UW-Madison. Dr Russell’s research focuses on construction management, civil engineering, education, and lifelong learning. He received a BS degree in civil engineering from the University of Cincinnati and MS and PhD degrees from Purdue University, and is a registered professional engineer in Wisconsin.

Irtishad U. Ahmad has more than 30 years of experience in teaching, research and curricula development in civil engineering and construction management. Prior to joining AUS, he taught at Florida International University, North Dakota State University, University of Cincinnati and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. In 2016, American Institute of Constructors awarded Dr Ahmad the prestigious W.A. Klinger Construction Education Award. He has co-authored the book Quantitative Techniques for Decision Making in Construction. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management in Engineering, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), from 2002 to 2008. He is an elected Fellow of ASCE.

Andrew Dainty is Dean of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering and Professor of the Sociology of Construction at Loughborough University, UK. A renowned expert on the sociologies of construction and engineering practice, for the past 25 years his research has focused on the social rules and processes that affect people working as members of project teams.  Andrew has led a research portfolio amounting to over £9m, has published over 400 papers in both academic and industry journals and is co-author/editor of 10 books and research monographs.  He has successfully supervised more than 40 PhD students to successful completion and has examined more than 50. He is also co-editor-in-chief of the leading research journal Construction Management and Economics, a Past Chair of the Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM) and a joint coordinator of CIB TG 76 on Recognizing Innovation in Construction. He is currently a visiting professor at Universities in Australia and Malaysia.

Carlos Formoso, is a Professor in Construction Management at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. He is currently the Head of the Postgraduate Program in Construction and Infrastructure. His main research interests are lean construction, production planning and control, safety management, social housing and value management. For almost thirty years of academic career, he has developed several research projects in partnership with the industry, including contractors, real estate developers, housing funding agencies, and companies that deliver prefabricated systems. He has been a senior advisor of the Brazilian Ministry of the Cities for the National Program for Quality and Productivity in the Habitat for eleven years. Also, Prof Formoso is currently a member of the editorial boards of six international academic journals, and has been an active member of the International Group for Lean Construction for more than 20 years.

Song Wu is a Professor of Surveying and IT at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield. He is an expert in computer modelling and data analysis in the built and human environment. His current research interest is in the area of reality computing and Artificial Intelligence which covers 3D scanning, UAV data capture, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, serious game technology and machine learning. He recently secured over £1.5m research grant including a AHRC serious game to combat gender based violence, Innovate UK KTP project and Highway England, Network Rail research in those areas. He was the lead researcher on a number of EPSRC funded projects including ‘3D to nD modelling’, ‘nD game–using gaming technology to engage school children’, Process Protocol’, ‘Salford: China research tour’, etc. In 2010, Song was awarded UK China Fellowship for Excellence for his collaboration research with leading Chinese research institutions. In 2012, He was awarded RICS education trust funds to investigate how Building Information Modelling supports surveying practice in UK. In 2015, his work on human behaviour simulation for energy simulation was supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering.  His research works have been widely published in over 100 research publications around the world.

Professor Hastak is Professor and Head of the Division of Construction Engineering and Management as well as Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. He has assisted the construction industry for the past 31 years through consulting, research, teaching, and service to the community. He is a world renowned expert in the area of construction engineering and management and a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) and a Certified Cost Professional (CCP). Prof Hastak has worked on numerous projects sponsored by the Construction Industry Institute (CII), NSF, State DOTs, and City Agencies.

As a prominent educator and consultant, he has given over 40 keynotes and invited lectures around the world. Prof Hastak has authored over 200 publications and reports in his area of expertise as well as co-authored and edited three widely used books (1) Infrastructure Planning, Engineering, and Economics (McGraw-Hill 2006 and 2015), (2) Skills and Knowledge of Cost Engineering (AACE 6^th Ed. 2015), and (3) CCP Certification Study Guide (AACE 2^nd Ed. 2016). He served on the AACE Education Board from 2004-2016. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering (2009-2016). He is one of the founders and the past chair of the Global Leadership Forum for Construction Engineering and Management programs (GLF-CEM) (http://wpvcemweb01.itap.purdue.edu/glf/default.aspx). Dr Hastak served as the Chair of the National Consortium of Housing Research Centers (NCHRC) (2008-2010) and was the invited Scholar-in-Residence at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center in 2006. In addition, Prof. Hastak has developed and managed (2007-2019) several websites as a public service to the construction industry including:

1. Emerging Construction Technologies website that highlights innovative technologies for the construction industry (http://wpvcemweb02.itap.purdue.edu/ect/default.aspx),
2. the Academic Breakthroughs website that was recently established to capture the academic advances in the area of Construction Engineering & Management at the PhD level (http://wpvcemweb01.itap.purdue.edu/phd2), and
3. Purdue Index for Construction (Pi-C) website that illustrates the periodic health of the construction industry (http://wpvcemweb01.itap.purdue.edu/CEM/Pi-C),

Dr Hastak received his BE (Civil) from Nagpur University, India, MSCE from the University of Cincinnati, and PhD (Civil) from Purdue University, USA. In addition, he is a trained university planner through SCUP and has received training at Cornell University in Executive Leadership, Financial Management, and Advanced Strategic Human Resource Management. He has worked on the faculty at Georgia Tech, NYU, University of Cincinnati, and currently at Purdue University.

Chris Harty is Professor of Technology and Organisation and Head of the School of the Built Environment at the University of Reading, UK. He has been the Director of the University’s EPSRC Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre (HaCIRIC) and has been principal / lead investigator on over £3.5 million of research projects funded by the EPSRC, TSB and IUK. He was Visiting Professor in the Department of Organisation at Copenhagen Business School from 2013 – 16 and is currently Visiting Professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

Chris has conducted ethnographic studies of the development and use of collaborative information systems in complex organisations and undertaken video-ethnographic studies of the use of immersive VR technologies in design processes and in user-centred design, notably in health care settings. He has also worked in the area of future studies and forecasting. His personal research contributions are in the areas of understanding innovation in the built environment and organisational processes, applying socio-technical systems oriented approaches to organisations and projects, and the design, implementation and use of information systems and he has published widely in these areas.

Professor Thomas Ng is the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Engineering as well as the Professor of Construction Engineering and Management and Associate Head of the Department Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong. Thomas’s research interests cover a wide range of topics including smart and resilient city, sustainable built environment, infrastructure asset management, digital transformation, construction informatics, construction productivity and performance, project delivery systems, etc. Over the years, he has secured more than USD 12 million of research grants and published over 380 scholarly items. Prof Ng received a Highly Commended Award under the Project Innovation Award category of the CIOB International Innovation & Research Awards 2012, and he was the recipient of several best paper awards in different journals and international conferences. Thomas is a Member of Technical Committee of Thermal Performance and Energy Use in the Built Environment set up by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/TC163) and an Editor of Journal of Built Environment Project and Asset Management. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Chartered Institute of Building, and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyor.

Les Ruddock is Professor of Construction and Property Economics in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield and has previously held the positions of Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and Director of the 6* rated Research Institute for the Built and Human Environment at the University of Salford. 

He is a member of the Board of the CIB and is also Joint Coordinator of the Working Commission (W055) Construction Industry Economics. 

He has written extensively on the economics of the built environment, including his book Economics for the Modern Built Environment on the consequences for the built environment of social and economic changes. In addition to his expertise in economics, he is also a Chartered Statistician, a Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building.

He is currently the economics lead on the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) team as member of the Action Group on ‘Innovations and smart technology for age-friendly buildings, cities and environment’ and his other areas of research interest are in the governance and economics of smart cities and the analysis of alternative approaches to the measurement of construction activity.

Professor Lucio Soibelman obtained his Bachelor and Master's Degrees from the Civil Engineering Department of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He worked as a construction manager for 10 years before moving in 1993 to the US where he obtained in 1998 his PhD in Civil Engineering Systems from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1998, he started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. In 2004, he moved as an Associate Professor to the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in 2008 was promoted to Professor. In January 2012, he joined the University of Southern California as the Chair of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

During the last 25 years he focused his research on advanced data acquisition, management, visualization, and mining for construction and operations of advanced infrastructure systems. He published over 150 books, books chapters, journal papers, conference articles, and reports and performed research with funding from NSF (NSF career award and several other NSF grants), NASA, DOE, US Army, NIST, IBM, Bosch, IDOT, RedZone Robotics among many others funding agencies. He is the former chief editor of the American Society of Civil Engineers Computing in Civil Engineering Journal. In 2010 he received the ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Award, in 2012 received the 2011 FIATECH Outstanding Researcher Celebration of Engineering & Technology Innovation, or CETI, 1Award, in 2016 he received the ASCE Richard R. Torrens Award, in 2017 he received the ASCE Construction Institute Construction Management award, in 2013 he was elected an ASCE fellow and in 2016 he was appointed as Viterbi Dean Professor at USC and was appointed as a Distinguished 1,000 talent Professor at Tsinghua University.

Professor Jan Wium qualified with a BScEng and MScEng in civil engineering from the University of Pretoria in South Africa and holds a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He worked in industry as structural engineering consultant and project manager for 20 years.

In 2003, he joined Stellenbosch University as a specialist in structural concrete and structural dynamics. He was appointed in 2010 to the Chair in Construction Engineering and Management. His research interests are modular construction, collaboration for better constructability, design management, and risk management.

Professor Edward Jaselskis is the E. I. Clancy Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. He was educated at the University of Illinois, receiving a BS in general engineering, an SM in civil engineering (emphasis in construction engineering and project management) from MIT, and a PhD in civil engineering (emphasis in construction engineering and project management) from the University of Texas-Austin. He has worked for Exxon as a cost and schedule engineer and field engineer, Perkins and Will as an electrical designer, and Bechtel as a field engineer. His primary research interests relate to the determinants of construction project success and innovative construction technologies. Professor Jaselskis is a registered professional engineer in the State of Iowa and has memberships in several organizations (American Society of Civil Engineering, Construction Institute, Transportation Research Board, American Society for Engineering Education, Sigma Xi, and National Society of Professional Engineers). He is also a member of the National Academy of Construction.

Patricia Tzortzopoulos Fazenda has graduated in Architecture and Urbanism in Brazil and has industrial experience in collaborative design integration and management. Patricia is Professor of Integrated Design, Associate Dean for Research at the School of Art Design and Architecture, and Director of the Innovative Design Lab.

Patricia’s career encompasses design, architecture, new product development and the built environment, with a focus on multidisciplinarity, integration between design and construction through collaborative working, and value generation in design. She initially specialised in design management through a Master's at the Postgraduate Programme of Civil Engineering -UFRGS, Brazil. As a design manager, she was responsible for managing client requirements and implementing process innovation to improve effectiveness and efficiency of design and its interfaces with construction. This practical experience underpins her research and teaching interests.

Professor William J. O’Brien focuses his professional efforts on improving collaboration and coordination among firms in the design and construction industry. Prof O’Brien is an expert on construction supply chain management and electronic collaboration, where he conducts research, teaches and consults on both systems design and implementation issues. Recently, his research on Advanced Work Packaging was featured in a cover story by Engineering News-Record, designated a Best Practice by the Construction Industry Institute, and has been adopted as a corporate execution standard by major owner operators such as ExxonMobil. He was the lead editor on the widely referenced Construction Supply Chain Management Handbook (CRC Press). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Construction Industry Institute, Fiatech, the Transportation Research Board, and the Texas Department of Transportation. He is the author or co-author of over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports. Prof O’Brien is currently a Professor and the Phil M. Ferguson Centennial Teaching Fellow in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. From 1999-2004 he was a faculty member at the University of Florida (Gainesville). As a teacher, Prof O’Brien has actively sought to deploy technology in innovative ways. While at Florida, he co-taught a “Collaborative Design Processes” class with faculty from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At Texas, he has sought to introduce leading mobile computing and visualization software to the classroom. These efforts were recognized by a 2008 University of Texas Innovative Instructional Technology Program (IITAP) Gold Award. Prof O’Brien was awarded the Richard L. Tucker Leadership and Service Award in 2018, among the highest honors of the Construction Industry Institute. His research has been recognized by the Fiatech consortium, where he was the recipient of 2007 and 2011 CETI Awards in the Technology and Knowledge-Enabled Workforce category, and the 2015 STAR Award. In 2012, Dr. O’Brien received the Outstanding Researcher Award from the Construction Industry Institute. In 2018, Prof O’Brien received the CII/Fiatech CETI award for Outstanding Researcher – Career that recognized his numerous contributions to industry and academia. Prof O’Brien is Emeritus Editor for the journal Advanced Engineering Informatics and a Specialty Editor for the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. He currently serves as Associate Chair for Architectural Engineering in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering. He led the Construction Engineering and Project Management program as Area Coordinator from 2011-2017 and was Transition Manager (Interim Director) of the Fiatech Industry Consortium from 2016-2017. Prior to returning to academia, Prof O’Brien led product development and planning efforts at Collaborative Structures, a Boston based Internet start-up focused on serving the construction industry. Prof O’Brien holds a Ph.D. and a M.S. degree in Civil Engineering and a M.S. degree in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University. He also holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering (Academic Honors) from Columbia University. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.

Professor John E. Taylor is the inaugural Frederick Law Olmsted Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in 2006 from Stanford University on the topic of innovation in A/E/C industry networks. At Georgia Tech, he is founder and Director of the Network Dynamics Lab, which examines industrial and societal dynamics associated with information system integration, industry globalization, workforce virtualization, shifting workforce demographics, energy conservation in and across buildings, and human mobility during natural disasters. Professor Taylor has authored over 200 technical publications and won five journal best paper awards. He was awarded the ASCE Thomas Fitch Rowland Research Prize in 2009 and the ASCE Daniel W. Halpin Award in 2015 for his scholarship. Prior to entering academia, Professor Taylor worked in industry as an estimator and project manager, and was the founder of two technology startups in the civil engineering field.

Geoffrey has a proven track record of accomplishment of academic leadership in construction management with a special interest in sustainable construction supported by information and communication technologies. He has led a large number of research projects with total funding of over HK$50 million and has authored more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals. He is a member of the Engineering Panel of The Research Grants Council in Hong Kong and a member of the editorial boards of several leading journals in the field of construction engineering and management, and has been invited to give keynote presentations in a number of international conferences. He served the built environment panel of the Research Assessment Exercise in Hong Kong in 2006, and he is the immediate past Chair of the Global Leadership Forum in Construction Engineering and Management Programs. Professionally, he is an Eminent Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute.

of Value Management (HKIVM). As a certified Value Management Facilitator (List A) recognised by the HKSAR Government, he has professionally designed and facilitated over 60 value management and partnering workshops for large and complex construction projects. He received the Presidential Citation Award from SAVE International in 2009 for his “energetic and engaging effort to enhance value research and education”.

Professor Bargstädt is Professor for Construction Engineering and Management at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. His research fields are in construction technologies, construction operations and construction logistics. Special focus is given to the development of software applications like building information modeling for project management and construction site operations as well as simulation of construction operations. Other areas of activity are in construction management, for example in claim management and arbitration.

After studying civil engineering at Technical University Braunschweig, at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and at Institut Supérieur du Béton Armé, Marseille, Prof. Bargstädt was a structural engineer in a large construction company. From 1986 to 1989 he worked for his PhD in structural engineering at the Technical University Braunschweig. Then a career in the construction industry followed from working as site engineer to being director of a regional division of a large construction company.

Since 1999 he is appointed as university professor. In 2012/2013 he was guest professor at the National Taiwan University, Taipeh. Since 2011 he is also regularly teaching as guest lecturer at Stellenbosch University.

Bargstädt served many years as students’ dean and as dean of the faculty. He is spokesman of the German association of Professors in construction engineering and construction management. He serves as Chairman of the German association of civil engineering faculties. Since the beginning of 2017 he is also president of 4ING e.V., the German Council of University Faculties in Engineering and Informatics.

Professor Akintoye BSc (Hons) MSc PhD FRICS FCIOB FInstCM is Dean of School of Built Environment and Engineering, Leeds Beckett University. He holds the Chair of Construction Economics and Management.

He was Visiting Professor to the Department of Civil Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and Department of Building and Real Estate, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was a Distinguished Scholar of the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He holds Fellow of both the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Chartered Institute of Building. In addition, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction. Professor Akintoye is Co-Coordinator of the World CIB (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction) Working Commission (W122) into Public Private Partnership.

Professor Akintoye spent many years of his academic life engaged in teaching, research and academic enterprise directly linked to the economic formation, modelling and prediction of construction activities. He has gained international recognition for his scholarly work in the area of construction risk management and procurement, construction estimating and modelling, construction economics, and construction inventory management. He has continued to work very closely with industry and has established a robust international network of experts in many countries with government institutions and private organisations on PPPs and PFIs.

Elham Delzendeh is a Lecturer and Researcher in Architecture and Built Environment at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield. She is an expert in building energy performance, energy simulation, and architectural digital technology. She has been involved in various international multi-disciplinary research projects with focus on sustainable and digital architecture.

Professor Wakefield is currently Professor of Construction, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor International and Dean of the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT, Australia. Ron researches and teaches at RMIT in the areas of process simulation and modelling, residential and commercial construction and uses of information technology in construction management. He has degrees in Civil Engineering, including a PhD and BE (Hon 1) from the University of New South Wales and an MSE from Princeton University.

Prior to joining RMIT, Professor Wakefield was the William E. Jamerson Professor of Building Construction in the Department of Building Construction and the Associate Director for Building Technology Research at the Center for Housing Research, Virginia Tech. Ron has over 25 years’ experience as an international researcher, consultant and engineer in building construction.  He is a Director of Launch Housing and JJR Consulting and a co-opted member of the Victorian Building Practitioners Board. 

speaker bio’s coming soon

Roz Thorpe, Associate Director - Education and Standards at CIOB,  joined the Institute in 2009 as accreditation officer and took on the role of head of education in 2011.  Prior to that Roz worked as a teacher of English and corporate courses manager at the British Council in Moscow where she lived for 10 years.  

Roz has a degree in English and a post graduate diploma in Russian as well as various teaching qualifications and is a chartered member of the CMI. Roz is responsible for managing the institute’s regulated qualifications and exams, the accreditation process and maintaining the institute’s published standards, the Education Framework.