Our Researcher Biographies.

Professor Michael Bourne

Project X Academic Lead (Theme D)

Professor of Business Performance Action, Execution and Implementation,

Cranfield University

Mike spent 15 years in business, spanning the valve, paper & board, building materials, machine tool and airline catering industries. He held a number of positions, with roles in production management, strategy and acquisitions, IT, HR, commercial and general management, including directorship positions in subsidiary companies. He gained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2001, researching the design and implementation of balanced performance measurement systems. He has spent the last fifteen years working with companies supporting senior management teams through the process of clarifying and executing their strategy. His approach is to take a stakeholder approach to clarifying strategy and enabling implementation through alignment of activity to the goals of the organisation. 

Mike is a Chartered Management Accountant and a Chartered Engineer. He has authored over 100 publications including The Handbook of Corporate Performance Management, Balanced Scorecard, Instant Manager and Successful Change Management in a Week. His research is at the interface of performance measurement with strategic management and control systems.

Naomi has a global reputation for her work on cross-sectoral comparisons of the performance of large and complex projects. She ran the MEGAPROJECT COST Action, an EU funded research programme that bought together over 90 researchers from 23 countries to create and analyse a cross-sectoral database of megaproject performance. She was a member of the World Economic Forum’s CEO Council for Transformational Megaprojects. Naomi has disseminated her research findings internationally to organisations such as the OECD, World Bank, and the European Investment Bank; and nationally to organisations such as the National Audit Office, Lloyds Register, the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA) and the Association of Project Management. She has worked with a variety of companies from ‘blue-chips’ to regional SMEs. She has been an executive director for the European Construction Institute and she is the author of one hundred and thirty peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters and articles in the field of project and innovation management.

In addition to her work as a researcher, Naomi has worked across the world in designing and delivering programmes and events focusing on the management and leadership of projects for undergraduate, masters, doctorate and continuing professional development audiences including Rolls-Royce and University of Oxford’s TSU leadership programme. 

Professor Naomi Brookes

Project X Academic Lead (Theme C)

Professor of Complex Programme Management,

University of Warwick

Doctor Alexander Budzier

Project X Academic Lead (Theme A)

Fellow in Management Practice in the Field of Information Systems,

University of Oxford

Alexander's research focuses on the challenges of managing projects, not only in the field of IT but also in hard and soft infrastructure, energy, mega events and organisational change. Alexander’s current research focuses on the challenges of IT-enabled change, novel ways of project set-ups and the risks of projects. He teaches and develops courses on project and programme management, risk management, and systems thinking. At Oxford, he regularly teaches on the MSc for Major Programme Management, the MBA and MPP programme and at the Major Project Leadership Academy, a leadership development programme for the top project managers in the UK civil service. Alexander also is the Academic Director of the Australian Major Project Leadership Academy and Hong Kong’s Major Project Leadership Programme. Alexander works with private and public sector organisations to build their individual and organisational capabilities to master the challenges of working with, in and around projects and programmes. He completed his doctoral studies at Saïd Business School in 2014. Prior to joining Oxford he worked at T-Mobile International and was a consultant with McKinsey's Business Technology Office in Düsseldorf and Chicago, where he advised clients on IT and operations issues.

Professor Davies is the RM Phillips Freeman Chair and Professor of Innovation Management in SPRU, University of Sussex Business School Andrew (2019-). Responsible for developing and overseeing research and teaching in SPRU on innovation and project management, with a focus on major infrastructure and urban developments. He started his career at SPRU, Sussex University before moving to Amsterdam University, Imperial College and UCL. He returned to SPRU in 2019 and continues as Honorary Professor the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London (UCL) (2019-) and Visiting Professor in the Department of Business and Management, LUISS, Rome (2013-). He is researcher, educator, consultant and advisor who is fascinated by understanding and making innovation happen in complex projects, with a focus on large-scale infrastructure in the built environment such as railway, metro, highways, utility systems, national heritage buildings and urban developments (e.g. London 2012 Olympics and Dongtan ecocity, Shanghai). His research-led teaching at MSc, MBA, PhD and executive levels is informed by in-depth collaborations with some of the UK's largest and most significant infrastructure projects. 

He frequently engages with national and international partners (professional bodies, government bodies and large firms) to design, produce and disseminate research, contribute to theory and radically transform project management practices. Over the past 15 years, Professor Davies has developed high-level research collaborations with leaders of some of the UK’s largest infrastructure projects including Heathrow (T5, T2 and 3rd runway), London Olympics, Crossrail, Thames Tideway Tunnel, High-Speed 1 & 2 and Westminster Palace Restoration and Renewal Project. His work shows that successful performance depends on a highly capable owner and leadership team, developing and supporting innovation, and establishing the capabilities to design and integrate complex systems.

Professor Andrew Davies

Project X ESRC Grant Principal Investigator

Project X Academic Lead (Theme E)

RM Phillips Freeman Chair in Innovation (SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit),

University of Sussex

Professor Andrew Edkins

Project X Academic Lead (Theme B)

Professor of the Management of Complex Projects,

University College London

Andrew Edkins is Professor of the Management of Complex Projects at the Bartlett, UCL’s faculty of the built environment. Following a degree in economics, his career started in major construction. He then shifted career to academe at UCL with an interest in the management of projects. Following both an MSc and PhD, he was involved in a research project into the early experiences of PFI. This then led to an opportunity to move back into the private sector working for a PFI/PPP provider where he stayed for five years before returning to UCL to set up a new MSc.

Since being back at UCL he has been a Vice Dean, and Director of two parts of the Bartlett, most recently being the inaugural Director of the Bartlett Real Estate Institute. With degrees that span economics and management and a career that has involved being both a practitioner and an academic, Andrew is a strong believer in the need for interdisciplinary working within and across sectors.  

Professor Davies is the RM Phillips Freeman Chair and Professor of Innovation Richard Kirkham is a Reader in Civil Engineering in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester. His research interests lie in quantitative risk methods in infrastructure performance and broader applications to decision-making in complex projects and programs. He is the academic lead for Theme F (Transformation) and co-investigator in the ESRC funded Project X - research aimed at improving the delivery of major projects and programmes in government. He is also academic lead for ‘resilience and complex systems’ in the Thomas Ashton Institute (a collaboration of The University of Manchester and The Health and Safety Executive) and directs the ‘project delivery’ research theme in the Manchester Urban Institute (MUI).

Doctor Richard Kirkham

Project X Academic Lead (Theme D&F)

Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering,

University of Manchester

Professor Michael Lewis

Project X Academic Lead (Theme B)

Professor of Management,

University of Bath

Professor Michael Lewis holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and worked at Warwick Business School, with visiting appointments at Harvard Business School and Georgetown University, before joining the University of Bath’s School of Management in 2004. His early research focused on the meaning and management of effective manufacturing practice but, over time, he has expanded his interests beyond the factory to address questions of efficiency and effectiveness in various public and private sector service settings – from fast fashion retail to care homes, from management consultancy to nuclear storage. Building on the strong legacy of supply chain research at Bath, Professor Lewis also studies the management of complex business relationships, contracts and major projects. He was the winner of the University of Bath Vice-Chancellor’s Research medal 2017. The author of more than 50 journal articles as well as several books, including a widely adopted and translated textbook on Operations Strategy (co-authored with Nigel Slack, Emeritus Professor at Warwick Business School, 6e forthcoming 2019). The impact of his research is far-reaching and is demonstrated by his ability to attract external funding from a diverse range of public and private sector bodies (EPSRC, ESRC, Welsh Government, etc.).

His various other commitments amply demonstrate how his interests span academia and practice. He is active in journal editorship, being a long serving and prize-winning Associate Editor of the Journal of Operations Management as well as serving on the Editorial Board for two other leading journals. He was a long-standing Member of the Academic Advisory Council to the Chartered Management Institute and was recently a member of a government expert group reporting on the measurement of UK manufacturing activity. He is currently a theme leader for the Cabinet Office Project Excellence Initiative and an academic scholar in the Cornell Institute for Health Futures.

Full Professor and Chair in Project Business Strategy at the University of Leeds, and educated in the most prestigious Italian technical university, Politecnico di Milano. He holds a Bachelors and Masters in Mechanical Engineering (2006) and a PhD “Cum Laude” in Industrial Engineering, Economics, and Management (2011). His research is about project management in large and complex infrastructure, particularly in the energy sector. In this setting he focuses on benchmarking, risk management, decommissioning, ethics & illegal practices, governance, financing, modularization. He attracted more than £1,000,000 of research funds.

Giorgio also works as a consultant and visiting academic for several institutions, including the IAEA, Argonne National Laboratories, the UK government, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority etc. He is the author of more than 100 international peer-reviewed publications, with 1000+ citations in Scopus (h-Index 19) and 2000+ in Google Scholar (h-index 26). Giorgio sits in the editorial board of the three most prestigious project management journals: the “International Journal of Project Management”, the “Project Management Journal” (where he is a senior editor) and “Construction Management and Economics”, plus “Progress in Nuclear Energy”.

Professor Giorgio Locatelli

Project X Academic Lead (Theme A)

Professor of Project Management,

University of Leeds

Doctor Nick Marshall

Project X Academic Lead (Theme E)

Senior Research Fellow,

University of Brighton

Nick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Change, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Management (CENTRIM) at the University of Brighton. He is academic lead for CENTRIM’s research group on Organisational Change and Renewal. His research focuses on the nature of knowledge and learning in organisations and seeks to link this to questions about innovation and change. He is particularly interested in the social practices of producing, negotiating, and using knowledge within varied organisational settings, but especially project-based, network, and temporary forms of organising. His research draws strongly on practice-based theories, emphasising knowledge and learning as active accomplishments emerging from specific social settings that have important implications for how practices are shaped. Investigating the boundaries between different knowledge communities and how these are constituted, reproduced, crossed, challenged, and redrawn is a key element of this.

The settings for his research have been many and varied, ranging from car factories to sewage plants, power stations to animation studios, offshore oil and gas platforms to humanitarian aid projects, road maintenance depots to aerospace companies, big rail construction projects to small firm action learning networks. Despite (or maybe because of) this diversity, the thread running through his research has been an enduring interest in the social and political dynamics of knowledge and practice and how these unfold in different contexts. He has published in journals such as British Journal of Management, Construction Management and Economics, European Journal of Information Systems, European Planning Studies, International Journal of Project Management, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Management Learning. He is the Chair of the Special Interest Group on Innovation of the British Academy of Management (BAM) and Co-Chair of the Innovation Track of the BAM Annual Conference. He holds an MA in Geography from St. Peter’s College, Oxford and a PhD in Economic Geography from King’s College, London.

Currently Professor Paul Nightingale is Director of Special Projects with the Economic and Social Research Council. Paul is Professor of Strategy at the University of Sussex and was Deputy Director of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU). He is one of the UK editors of Research Policy, the leading international innovation studies journal. Originally trained as a chemist, he worked in industry before undertaking a PhD in Science Policy at SPRU. His main areas of research are science policy and the strategic management of technology, and he has researched extensively on innovation and its management and financing. Paul spent most of his career as a contract researcher and spent 10 years with the Complex Product Systems Innovation Centre, funded by the ESRC.

Professor Paul Nightingale

Project X Academic Lead (Theme F)

Professor of Strategy,

University of Sussex

Professor Paolo Quattrone

Project X Academic Lead (Theme C)

Professor of Accounting, Governance & Society,

University of Manchester

I am Professor of Accounting, Governance and Society at the Alliance Manchester Business School, which I joined in April 2020, after having held a Chair in Accounting, Governance and Social innovation at the University of Edinburgh Business School, where I also was Dean of Special Projects at the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences until April 2018.  I am also an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford, where I am still Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Italian Studies at Oxford, which I co-founded while being there as Reader in Accounting at the Saïd Business School (in association with an Official Studentship, i.e. fellowship, at Christ Church). I have been serving on the Thought Leadership and Ethics Committee of the AICPA-CIMA for a few years and from January 2019, I am a Member of the Advisory Group on the Future of Corporate Reporting at the Financial Reporting Council.

My research interests are quite diverse but they all relate to how knowledge, and business knowledge in particular, emerges, engages, establish itself as ‘truth’ and informs and relates to decision-making processes. I currently research and consult in the area of Major Programme Management, especially in relation to issues of reporting design and visualisation for managing risk and uncertainty, and of governance and leadership. I sit on the Faculty of the Major Projects Leadership Academy of the UK Cabinet Office (and other satellite programmes in collaboration with the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford, including the Australian Major Project Leadership Academy).

Dr. Katherine Bloomfield is a Post Doctorate Research Associate at the University of Hull and Research Fellow to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority endorsed ‘Project X’ - a collaborative partnership between academia and government for improving the performance of major government projects and programmes.

 Katherine's research interests lie in the initiation and conception of major projects, where she can apply her knowledge of systems thinking, complex systems, public procurement, contracts and risk. Her current portfolio of researched projects cover numerous major projects from a broad range government departments, including the Home Office, the Department for Transport, the Crown Commercial Service and the Ministry of Defence. Katherine is a member of the Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull and a former researcher for the Risk Institute at the University of Hull.

 Prior to her position as an IPA Project X Research Fellow, Katherine was awarded a Ph.D. scholarship in Systems Science, working closely with the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to solve the complex challenges associated with systemic risk in national defence procurement systems. More recently, Katherine’s research been nominated for the Association for Project Managers (APM) Doctorate of the Year Award 2020.

Email: k.bloomfield@hull.ac.uk

Twitter: @KABloomfield,

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/katherinebloomfield/ 

Doctor Katherine Bloomfield

Project X Research Fellow (Theme B)

University of Hull

Doctor Rebecca Vine

Project X ESRC Grant Co-Investigator (Theme E)

Lecturer in Accounting,

University of Sussex

Rebecca Vine is a lecturer at the University of Sussex. She is actively involved in professional accounting education and has held responsibility for several postgraduate and undergraduate modules at the University of Sussex. Her research explores management control, innovation and policy issues associated with accountability and the governance of risk within large-scale infrastructure projects. In Project X she is investigating how performance can be controlled to harness collective knowledge and improve delivery capability. The central themes of this work are the everyday risk management practices underpinning major programmes (riskwork) and the role of control technologies in enabling innovation and performance improvement.

For over 25 years Rebecca has worked in and with large-scale projects. Before becoming an academic she held senior roles at Accenture as a controller and commercial lead in outsourcing, IT transformation and performance management projects based in the UK, US, Europe and Africa. Her professional career started in the late 1980s in the Oil Industry (Exxon) as a Chartered Management Accountant (CGMA, ACMA). She has experience as an Associate Director of an executive training house working with Senior Civil Servants and sat on the South East Board of Young Enterprise. Recently she became a Non-Executive Director of a vanguard community solar project in Sussex.

Phillippa Groome is a doctoral researcher at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex. Her research focusses on gender equality within major infrastructure projects, and the client-led initiatives driving ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ (EDI) across the supply chain. Specialising in engaged research, she maintains close-ties with government, industry and academia through extensive stakeholder networks. She supports the work of the Infrastructure Client Group (ICG) as a member of their EDI Workstream, and holds the roles of both Research Associate and Co-ordinator for the Project X Research Programme. She is currently conducting her fieldwork as a Policy Advisor seconded with the Infrastructure Skills Team, DfT.

Email: p.groome@sussex.ac.uk

Phillippa Groome

Project X Research Associate (Theme E)

Doctoral Researcher,

University of Sussex

Doctor Dicle Kortantamer

Project X Research Fellow (Theme E)

University of Brighton

Dicle Kortantamer holds a MSc from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems and a BSc in Computer Engineering. After graduating from LSE in 2000, she joined the two-year graduate programme of JPMorgan Chase where she completed rotations across a range of key business areas as well as courses on leadership and finance. Afterwards, she started working as a project manager, and then, as a programme manager in the financial services industry in the UK. As a senior Vice President, she led complex, large-scale information systems enabled organizational change programmes. Her teams and stakeholders were based in the US, UK and Asia.

Dicle joined CENTRIM (Centre for Change, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management), University of Brighton in 2016. Her PhD research examined leadership in the complex strategic change projects of large organisations through case studies conducted in the UK government and the financial services industry. She has received the best conference paper by an early career researcher award at the IRNOP (International Research Network on Organising by Projects) Conference in 2018 and the Association for Project Management (APM) research grant in 2017. She has held an appointment as a lecturer (information systems) prior to her appointment as a Project X research fellow in 2018.

Having graduated from The University of Sheffield in 2019 with a BA in Quantitative Social Science (Management), Joe is now a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Bath School of Management. His research broadly focuses on the front-end (initiation) phase of large inter-organisational projects with special application to concept of Uncertainty. Joe is a Project X Research Associate, working on ‘Front- and back-end management practices and their influence on project performance’. He also possesses a MRes in Management, obtained from the University of Bath in 2020. 

His current interests revolve around overarching theme of the front-end phase of large inter-organisational projects. Currently, Joe is researching the front-end phase in relation to the concept of Uncertainty. He is interested in how uncertainty within this phase can be recognised/detected and mitigated, building upon emerging scholarly developments within the front-end literature and established uncertainty literatures.

Joe Harrison

Project X Research Associate (Theme B)

Doctoral Researcher,

University of Bath

Akinyo Ola

Project X Research Associate (Theme E)

Doctoral Researcher,

University of Brighton

Akinyo Ola is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Brighton Business School. He is an ACCA Chartered Accountant and a Performance Management Professional with diverse experiences in private and public sector organisations. He is currently researching on Improving Project Capabilities within the UK public sector.

Karlene is an award-winning risk and value management professional who focuses on starting megaprojects for success at ARAVUN. She has effectively led strategic risk and value management studies on projects and programmes such as Crossrail 2, Thameslink and Wessex Improvement Programme. She is reading for a Masters in Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford. Karlene speaks and consults internationally and her writing has featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, the Association for Project Management and Institute for Risk Management.  

Karlene Agard

Project X Research Fellow (Theme A)

Senior Risk and Value Management Consultant,

Aravun

Phoebe Young

Project X Research Associate (Theme F)

Doctoral Researcher,

University of Manchester

Phoebe Young is a second year PhD student at the University of Manchester, her research focuses on complexity in government transformation projects in the justice sector. This work lies within both the Project X Research group, in the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in the UK Government, and the Project Management research group in the department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester. She did her MEng in Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester where her dissertation research focused on benefits realisation in government prison projects. 

Baker Rickaby is a Doctoral Researcher at University College London (UCL), The Bartlett and is an Associate Fellow at Project X – Theme E Capability & knowledge management. His research focuses on some of the critical challenges facing the delivery of major projects and programmes. Continuing from his engineering and project management background, Baker is currently completing an Engineering Council (EPSRC) sponsored doctoral degree. As part of his research, Baker is leading a research collaboration between High Speed Two Ltd (HS2 Ltd) and UCL. For the past 2 years, Baker has been closely engaging with HS2 Ltd and is undertaking a research secondment as a Project Analyst. He has received awards from the Major Projects Association (MPA) and Project Management Institute (PMI) for his research on megaprojects. Baker actively engages in research and industry informed teaching and supervision for MSc courses at UCL.

Baker Rickaby

Project X Research Associate (Theme E)

Doctoral Researcher,

University College London

Doctor Vedran Zerjav

Project X ESRC Grant Co-Investigator (Theme B)

Lecturer in Infrastructure Project Management,

University College London

I am an interdisciplinary scholar having started with civil engineering, through interdisciplinary design studies and then migrated into project management and organisation studies in the context of built environment. My core interest is around project-based organisational forms and the context of urban infrastructure and technologies. I am committed to impact-driven, interdisciplinary and collaborative research. As an empirical researcher I looked at a variety of settings (aviation, rail, healthcare, water engineering, technology development) and scales of implementation (medium-sized projects to major projects and programmes). While most of my work has used qualitative methodologies based on single and multiple case study designs involving semi-structured interview data and other qualitative sources, I have a keen interest in novel methodologies for project studies. I am an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Project Management and a co-editor of special issues in Project Management Journal and The international Journal Of Managing Projects in Business.

Since 2017 I have been involved with Project X Theme B identifying strategic front-end and operations back-end considerations and approaches in major government projects. The Theme B team is arranging a series of Nominal Group Technique (NGT) workshops with UK government officials engaged in major projects delivery. Areas of research include phenomena of project gestation and transitions. As part of this interest, I recently co-edited a special section in Project Management Journal dedicated to Project Transitions. The target audience for this steam of research includes both academic (organisational and project scholars) and practitioner audiences- public sector officials and SROs, private sector key participants. Analytical repertoire used in research includes interview-based thematic and grounded theory analytical methods, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), bibliometric network analysis and video-based interaction analysis.

Terry’s background is in Operational Research (OR), with Oxford and Birmingham University Maths and OR degrees. He worked for 9 years in the defence industry later specialising in project risk management. He has worked in three business schools: Strathclyde, head of school in Southampton and Dean of the Hull University Business School. He also set up a Risk Institute at Hull specialising in risk in human systems. 

He has held a variety of consultancy posts, including supporting multiple $bn post-project arbitration claims, and managing risk in projects and operations within companies. He has held multiple large research contracts, including on OR and modelling complexity.

He works with the Infrastructure & Projects Authority’s “Project X” and has led multiple PMI-funded research projects including on Benefits, governance and the front-end; he is co-investigator on the ESRC grant on Government Major Projects delivery. He also currently holds contracts on managing human-factors risk in operations eg offshore wind farms and occupational stress.

He has almost 100 journal articles in OR, project-management and risk (h-index 51), and a number of books. He is an accredited project-manager and sits on the PMI Academic Insight Team, has edited a leading academic journal, is on the UK “REF” panel, and holds various Fellowships.

Professor Terry Williams

Director of the Risk Institute,

University of Hull

Carolina Toczycka

Project X Research Associate (Theme C)

Doctoral Researcher,

University of Edinburgh

Carolina is a final year PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh studying the digitalization of major infrastructure project delivery. Her focus is on how numerical and visual representations (models, dashboards, reports) are used in programme coordination and control practices. Bringing together the fields of management accounting, organization theory, and information systems, Carolina takes an interdisciplinary approach to conceptualizing what “efficiency” and “progress" mean for settings characterized by high uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in the digital age. As Project X Research Associate, Carolina studies benefit realization, especially the changes in value and visibility that benefits undergo throughout the project lifecycle. She is the recipient of a full EPSRC and Costain scholarship for her PhD, supervised by Prof Paolo Quattrone, Prof Roberto Rossi and Dr Rob Baxter.

Carolina is passionate about making the intellectual groundings of her academic work accessible to practitioners. She has designed and delivered several workshops showing how humanities and social sciences can be relevant for designers and civil engineers. In May 2019, Carolina was awarded funding by Tideway to design a framework to measure benefits from project digitalization.

 Email: Carolina.toczycka@ed.ac.uk

Hang is a first-year Doctoral Researcher at the University of Hull and a Project X Research Associate. Her PhD is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), supervised by Prof Terry Williams and Prof Andy Jonas.

Hang’s research interest lies in the success of major public projects. Her current research focuses on bridging the gap between public policies and public projects, which is critical to the achievement of government strategic objectives. She has co-authored a number of articles in project benefits, project governance and project front-end. 

 Hang graduated from The University of Sheffield in 2013 with an MSc in Economics, Banking and Finance. She is a PRINCE2® and MSP® Practitioner. Hang has earned Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) level I and is a CFA level II Candidate.

Hang Vo

Project X Research Fellow (Theme C)

University of Hull

Francesca Vinci

Project X Research Associate (Theme E)

Doctoral Researcher,

University College London

Francesca Vinci is a Doctoral Researcher in the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London (UCL). Her research broadly focuses on the dynamics of the enterprise collaborative model which is expanding in the UK to delivering infrastructure projects. She is interested in qualitative methods and her work is mostly built on an inductive and interpretive approach. As part of her research, Francesca has been involved in several research projects with major UK infrastructure clients with the aim of offering the industry informed and strategic directions on the delivery of major projects and programmes. Alongside her PhD, Francesca has engaged with leading organisations, from contractors to consultancies, in order to corroborate her academic work with some industry experience. She is currently an Associate Fellow of the Project X Theme E, Capability & Knowledge Management, particularly investigating the area of capabilities in multi-project inter-organisational settings.

Dr Juliano Denicol is Lecturer in Project Management at the School of Construction and Project Management, the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL. Juliano holds a PhD in Megaproject Management from University College London, a Master of Research (MRes) in Industrial Engineering, and Bachelor's degree in of Architecture and Urbanism (BArch) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

 Juliano is the Global Head of the Megaprojects Special Interest Group (SIG) at the International Project Management Association (IPMA), where he coordinates a global platform with 73 countries to advance our understanding of megaproject delivery. He is the founder and director of the IPMA Megaprojects Book Club, a global platform of events to discuss concepts and practices with leading megaproject authors. He is Co-Investigator of Project X, a major research network that aims to improve major project delivery in the UK, established by nine universities in collaboration with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), and the Cabinet Office. Before joining UCL, Juliano has worked as a supply chain management consultant at High Speed 2, the largest infrastructure project in Europe, and advisor to the European Commission on public procurement policies.

 Juliano’s research explores the management of major and megaprojects. Previous research included several iconic UK megaprojects: High Speed 1, Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, London 2012 Olympics, Crossrail, Thames Tideway Tunnel, and High Speed 2. His work on megaprojects has been regarded of high global impact, receiving research awards from the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Major Projects Association (MPA), and the International Project Management Association (IPMA). Juliano has received the prestigious 2019 Global Young Researcher Award from the IPMA and the 2019 Best Reviewer Award from the Project Organising Special Interest Group of the European Academy of Management (EURAM).

Email: juliano.denicol@ucl.ac.uk

Twitter: @Juliano_Denicol

LinkedIn: Juliano_Denicol

Doctor Juliano Denicol

Project X ESRC Grant Co-Investigator (Theme E)

Lecturer in Project Management,

University College London

Doctor Jas Kalra

Project X Research Associate (Theme E)

Research Fellow,

Newcastle University

Dr. Jas Kalra is an Assistant Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Newcastle University Business School. His research focuses on the development and orchestration of inter-organisational project relationships and networks. His current study examines the capabilities required to develop and govern multi-sided platforms to drive collaboration in construction projects. Prior to this, Dr. Kalra worked as a Research Fellow at University College London and HPC Supply Chain Innovation Lab, University of Bath, School of Management, where his work examined the governance of inter-organisational relationships. In particular, he studied the integration of regional small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in complex megaproject supply chains and the development of their capabilities. Dr. Kalra earned his PhD from Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester. His thesis examined how organisations develop and use social capital to govern professional service relationships. In his research, Dr. Kalra employs a range of qualitative methods, such as (variance-based) case studies, process studies, and engaged scholarship. Additionally, Dr. Kalra has also formally trained in writing and delivering teaching cases and has written award-winning teaching cases on Hinkley Point-C.

Sarah has an extensive practitioner and consultancy career in projects, programmes and transformation across the private sector, central and local government in the UK and internationally.  She specialises in helping organisations operationalise strategy and policy.

Sarah is a first-year Doctoral Researcher at the University of Manchester. Her PhD is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), supervised by Prof Anupam Nanda and Dr Richard Kirkham. Her focus is on improving the delivery of major projects and programmes in government and her doctoral research focuses on benefits governance.  Sarah holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and is a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield University. She is also a Chartered Project Professional, Fellow and former Non-Executive Director of the Association for Project Management.

Sarah is a published author and researcher in project leadership and organisational transformation, and is a contributor to books, professional bodies of knowledge and professional journals. She is also a guest lecturer for under-graduate and MSc students in project management, and has presented for the PLP and at conferences.

Sarah Coleman

Project X Research Fellow

University of Manchester

Doctor Clare Eriksson

Project X Academic Lead (Theme F)

University of Liverpool

Through Clare’s previous roles as Director of Global Research & Policy for the RICS and Head of Research for Jones Lang LaSalle Ireland, she is a highly skilled and experienced researcher, chartered surveyor and property consultant with 20 plus years experience. She has extensive and varied experience working across the private sector, academia and civil society (professional organisations).