Announcements
This announcement now contains eleven items: Download of Professor John Pike's Inaugural Lecture; Announcement of the European Construction Institute's 21st Annual Conference; Slides from the ProBE2009 Conferenece;The best paper award at the Conference in Loughborough September 2009; downloadable slides from 8th International Congress on Advances In Civil Engineering September 2008, University of Eastern Mediterranean; downloadable keynote paper from a Symposium/Workshop held at ITS Surabaya, Indonesia jointly with Eindhoven University of Technology entitled 'International Technology and Knowledge Flows for Post Disaster Reconstruction' in January 2008 and keynote paper from a conference in North Cyprus Novemeber 2007 held at The Eastern Mediterranean University entitled 'Developing Next-Generation Engineering and Technology Professionals';a downloadable summary of a workshop on 'Enhancing performance through relationally integrated value networks held in Hong Kong University on Dec 1, 2007, a downloadable summary of a workshop discussing social dynanics, an abstract of a Keynote paper at a conference and information on a book on strucural analysis and design.
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Modern Construction Management 6th Edition Blackwell Publishing was published in July 2006 details on this site. *************************************************************************************************************
Some news: March 2009 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, for announcement and details of Society click RSE
Below being welcomed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by the President Lord Wilson of Tillyorn
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Professor John Pike's Inaugural Lecture 20th April 2010
John Pike started as lecturer at what is now Nottingham Trent University, left academia to start his own consulting engineering company which was very successful. He has now returned to NTU as a visiting Professor and delivered his inaugural lecture on the subject of Politics and Leadership in Civil Engineering. He wonders why Civil Engineers in other Countries attain high political office but not so in the UK. He gives reasons and remedies. Click HERE (PDF version) for download.
European Construction Institute's 21st Annual Conference 24-25 June 2010 Paris--Click Global Construction Summit for details.
ECI contact www.europeanconstruction.eu e-mail eci@lboro.ac.uk
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PRoBE2009 Conference Glasgow Caledonian University
End of presentation 'Making your PhD Count' to the PRoBE 2009 Confernce November 19th. The audience were kind in their applause.
Download commentary on the slides presented at PRoBE09, click here
The slides are split over two files because of file size rerstrictions.
Download slides 1 to 22, click here
Download slides 23 to 38 renumbered 1 to 16, click here
1 Global Innovation in Construction Conference 2009
Conference dates: 13-16 September 2009, Loughborough
Click CONFERENCE for details
The Global Innovation in Construction Conference was a celebration of the contribution that academia and industry have jointly achieved through research and collaboration and an exploration of how research and innovation transfer will continue to develop. This conference provided a platform that allowed academic colleagues and their industrial partners to display and celebrate their achievements.
Note on proceedings
Martin Morgan Tuuli and Steve Rowlinson being awarded the Emerald Best Paper Award by Valerie Robbilard for their paper
at the Global Innovation in Construction Conference, Loughborough 2009. I'm looking on.
Their paper was entitled:
What empowers individuals and teams in projects? A critical incident analysis
Note Martin and Steve's shirts, perhaps they thought Loughborough was Tropical!
Below is Wim Bakens of CIB receiving a small token for chairiring the discussion on the way forward
2 8th International Congress on Advances In Civil Engineering
September 2008, University Eastern Mediterranean, North Cyprus
conference details see web link
Keynote paper 'Are Construction Professionals Good Strategic Managers' R. McCaffer and F.t Edum-Fotwe
The attched down load contains the slides presented at the conference
The slides are in two files. The first file Slides part 1:
Slides 1 to 5 decscribe the transition of Construction Management since the 1960s to present day reflected in taught material
Slides 6 to 10 present the context of the posts that are available in construction and occupied by our graduates
Slide 11 highlights the transition that we are not making in sufficient numbers
Slide 12 gives some reasons
It seems that the biggest ambition that is imparted to our students is to be the manager of projects, the bigger the ambition the bigger the project. However it seems that project management is the ceiling of our graduates ambitions, leading companies and leading the industry is not yet ambitions for enough of our graduates.
Slide 13 and 14 reflects on the reasons behind the lack of business leaders
Slide 15 to 20 explores strategy formulation in the construction industry reflecting that it more of a command driven industry than one that develops responsive strategies
Slide 21 summariese the analysis
The remaining slides are shown in Slides part 2:
Slide 22 (1) begins an explanation of the activities at Loughborough University to correct the identified weakness.
This covers the use of sponsored degrees involving industry in the education of our undergraduates-slide 23(2)
Also covered was our post-graduate Construction management programme-Slide 24(3)
And Slides 25-27(4-6) describes our simulation that has been used to train some 20,000 young engineers in company and financial management.
Slides 28,29 and 30 (7,8and 9)rounded off the presentation.
Questions at the conference concentrated on our sponsored degrees which seemed both to excite and concern the audience. Excitement was rooted in the concept of working with the employers in educating undergraduates, the fear was would the University lose control of its own degrees. Re-assurance on this last point was well received recognising that it takes a certain competence and confidence to enter into successful partnerships with major companies.
The other questions related to how MERIT our simulation could be accessed. The centre piece of MERIT use is the annual Constrtuction Business Game run on behalf of the Institution of Civil Engineers starting each February with registration taking place in January.
See the MERIT panel on the home page for details or click MERIT
To view click on SLIDES part1 slides 1 to 21, Slides part2 slides 22 to 30 (Numbered 1 to 9)
3 Symposium and Workshop:
'International Technology and Knowledge Flows for Post Disaster Reconstruction'
ITS Surabaya and Eindhoven University of Technology
8th to 10th January 2008, ITS Surabaya, Indonesia
Keynote paper : Latent aspects of flows in knowhow and technology transfer
Francis T Edum-Fotwe and Ronald McCaffer
For download click on paper title.
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At a conference hosted by the Eastern Mediterranean University in North Cyprus the following members of the Loughborough extended family met.
Left to right are SW Poon from Hong Kong, Francis Edum- Fotwe from Loughborough, Tahir Celik,Chair Higher Education Board North Cyprus and David Arditti Illinois Institute of Technology . All Loughborough PhDs
4) Downloadable keynote paper. Click on paper title for download.
11th international conference on
inspection,
appraisal, repairs
& maintenance of
structures
Co-Organiser:
-Building Sciences Research Centre,
University,
managed by: ci-premier conference organisation,
14-17 november 2007 • north
Keynote paper:
Francis T Edum-Fotwe and Ronald McCaffer
Department of Civil and Building Engineering,
Email: f.t.edum-fotwe@lboro.ac.uk
Francis edum-fotwe presented the paper at the conference
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On a visit to Hong Kong late November/early December 2007 I met some of Loughborough's great extended family, left to right are SW Poon, Henry Liu, Bolly Yim, Yau Wing Sing and Mohan Kumaraswamy and that's me in the front.
5 Downloadable summary of a workshop held in Hong Kong on 1st December,2007 University and organised by Professor Mohan Kumaraswamy. The workshp's title was ' Enhancing performance and overall value through Relationally Integrated value Networks.
This workshop was organised by Professor Mohan Kumaraswamy and his research group presented their work and four discussion groups comprisng mainly industry representatives discussed the issues and gave feedback.
Download click 'Relationally Integrated Networks'
6 Downloadable summary of International Workshop on Social Dynamics
On March 6th an International Construction Workshop arranged by PSIBouw and
‘SOCIAL-DYNAMICS OF COLLABORATION IN PROJECTS’
Presentations were made by researchers from
Other Universities present and contributing to the deliberations were the Universities of Greenwich,
Sciences at
A downloadable summary can be obtained by clicking on the link below however we request that if you download this summary you e-mail: f.t.edum-fotwe@lboro.ac.uk advising us and we will maintain a record of the researchers interested in this subject and we can forward further developments and information to you.
Download click: Social Dynamics in Construction
7 Keynote paper Joint International Conference on Construction Culture, Innovation and Management (CCIM) November 2006 Dubai, United Arab Emirates CIB/British University in Dubai IMPROVING CONSTRUCTION: WHY INNOVATION TARRIES Ronald McCaffer and Francis Edum-Fotwe Department of Civil and Building Engineering Loughborough University, LE11 3TU, UK
ABSTRACT The role of innovation in driving significant improvements and productivity gains in manufacturing prompted the adoption of an initiative to reform the construction sector in the UK to reflect a more manufacturing outlook for its operations and business activities. Whilst this initiative produced several notable developments, there have been queries raised in recent times on how the sector’s performance can be improved on a sustainable basis. For any sustainable improvement scheme to work effectively, it has to be accompanied by a shift in the cultural perspectives for improvement construction. The paper explores the general concept of innovation and the nature of innovation in the construction. It explores the apparent slow rate of innovation that has been associated with construction for several decades. It argues much of the transformation that the sector would have to undergo to enable construction attain the same levels of innovation as obtains in the manufacturing sector would have to be a cultural re-orientation to make innovation the norm, rather than the exception. A framework to support the formal execution of continuous innovation is presented. Keywords: construction, innovation, improvement, culture, systems
To read a summary of the keynote presentation (in PDF format), please download the following document: Dubai Summary of keynote presentation
8 Recommendation of a new book on structural analysis. For those interested in structural analysis either as a teacher or practioner I have discovered a new and interesting book that places the subject in the modern context of dependency on software. Traditional textbooks on structural analysis cover mechanics and how solutions are achieved. This is only part of the story. Users of modern structural analysis software also need to know how to use it to best effect. The book tells you how to do that. Click on Modern Structural Analysis for details
