The School of Civil Engineering and Surveying

Profile

Academic Qualifications

1996       PhD in Design Management, University of Reading, UK

Al-Bizri S, 1995, Design Management Plan Generator (DMPG), Knowledge Based System for Planning the Design Process in the Construction Industry, Reading University, UK

1990       MSc in Construction Management, University of Reading, UK

1979       BSc in Structural and Civil Engineering, University of Damascus, Syria

Teaching Interests

Salam is exploring the issues surrounding integration of design and construction processes and how through education a better understanding of issues can be achieved and best practice delivered.  By acquiring and exploiting the knowledge and skills of the experts in the field, the students can be educated in the cause and effect relationships, which result from decisions making. This is demonstrated as best practice as well as illustrating the current weaknesses in the way activities are currently carried out. 

A Harvard style case study approach to teaching in this area is preferred as students respond much more positively to an action oriented approach.  With input from leading organisations in the field such as Mace, Lend Lease and Rise, Salam has developed several courses and lectures, sourced and developed site based case study material, which at the same time has enabled these organisations to question their management approaches.  These courses are at undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as CPD modules. Elements have also been developed and delivered at the Mace Business School to potential site teams and their trade contractors.

Research Interests

Sustainable construction will require ever more integration between design and production and concepts such as Technology Clusters that recognise the inherent complexities and new management structures will be essential in the future.  Salam’s latest paper: Management Framework for Technology Clusters implementation, was published in Construction Management and Economics, the leading international journal in the field. Potentially the follow through from this paper could lead to a radical rethinking of construction management practice. In addition to conventional academic publication Salam has been concerned with the problems of knowledge capture and the reuse of experience.  To this end she has produced an interactive knowledge base of good construction management practice attached to a process map of the whole construction process from inception to completion.  The practice has been gleaned from a wide range of experience; academic, theoretical and practice which when integrated in this way presents practitioners with a fast track approach to rapid knowledge gain.

A continuing thrust of Salam’s work is how to embed changes in practice in a complex situation where the knowledge capability is variable and fragmented.  An example of this is the development of briefing decision support based around Quality Function Deployment (QFD).  The task was to develop a performance based decision support for the built environment.  For the underlying knowledge base she undertook a major literature search, turned general requirements into performance based goals and developed the PeBBu decision support system.  The final programme has many original features; interactive access to the www, decision recording within the QFD matrix and enhanced reporting geared to performance based briefing.  The latest development is to use the framework of this work and develop a decision support tool for risk assessment of cross infection in hospital environments to reduce the growth of Health Care Acquired Infections such as MRSA.

PhD Supervision

Sultan Ahmad S. Hijazi

Investigation of Health and Safety Management System in Saudi Arabian Construction Companies

Expected to start in October 2012

Industry Experience

2003 – 2011                           Providing consultancy services to the Syrian Virtual University leading their international collaborative programmes

1999 – 2001                           Providing consultancy services to various organisations based in London and Basingstoke

1998 – 1999                           Ove Arup & Partners, Arup Project Management, London

1996 – 1998                           Mace International, Middle East

1995 – 1998                           Mace Ltd, London

Selected Publications

Refereed journal

Al-Bizri, S. and Gray, C. 2010, Management framework for technology clusters implementation, Construction Management and Economics, 28 (7), 771-782

Gray, C. and Al-Bizri, S. 2007, Modelling trade contractor information production, Architectural engineering and design management, James & James (Science Publishers) Ltd, London, 3, 39-48

Chapter in a book

Gray, C. and Al-Bizri, S. 2004, The management of design, Chapter 9 in the "Intelligent Building: Design, Management and Operation", Derek Clements-Croome (ed.), Thomas Telford, UK

Conference proceedings

Gray, C. and Al-Bizri, S. 2009, Steps to consistency in management practice across multi organization construction project teams. In Bolisani, E. (ed. 10^th European Conference on Knowledge Management. Università Degli Studi Di Padova, Italy, Academic Publishing International.

Al-Bizri, S. Gray, C. and Vaz, D. 2008, The management of the design of modern curtain wall cladding systems, ARCOM Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference, 1-3 September 2008, Cardiff, UK, 2, 759-768

Gray, C. and Al-Bizri, S. and Atkin B. 2007, Web supported process management to achieve consistent international project team integration and performance, Proceeding of CIB World Building Congress 2007, Construction for Development, 21-25 May 2007, Cape Town, South Africa

Gray, C. and Al-Bizri, S. 2006, Developments of QFD to support decision making during the briefing process, Proceeding of Joint International Conference on Computing and Decision Making in Civil and Building Engineering June 14-16, 2006 - Montréal, Canada, 2771-2780