I taught construction economics at the School of the Built Environment at the University of Technology Sydney from 1992-2020, and at UCL’s Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management in London 2014-20.
Prior to becoming an academic in 1992 I worked as an analyst and economist in the private sector for commodity brokers, the
Australian Stock Exchange, the Property Council of Australia, and the NSW Royal
Commission into Productivity in the Building Industry.
My long-standing interest is in industry
performance and development. I worked on industry policy in the 1990s with
both the Australian Government's Construction Industry Development Agency and the NSW
Department of Public Works and Services. Also for the Australian Government I was
a consultant for the Department of Industry on their 1998 Building for Growth construction
industry policy, and the 2002 Cole Royal Commission into the industry. Through the 1990s and 2000s I did research and workshops for a range of industry associations, including the Australian Construction Contractors
Association and the Air Conditioning and Mechanical Contractors Association, and other government departments at both State and Federal levels.
My research has broadly focused on issues around the structure, conduct and technological trajectory of the building and construction industry. Topics I have written papers on cover procurement, innovation, productivity, industry measurement and statistics, competition, industry structure, M&A and globalization. I was co-editor with Rick Best of the three volume Building in Value series of books published between 1999 and 2003: Pre-design Issues; Design and Construction; and Workplace Strategies and Facilities Management, the last with Craig Langston. In 2011 Taylor and Francis published a book I edited called Modern Construction Economics: Theory and Application.
For many years I went to the annual conference for W55 (the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) Working Commission on Building Economics, and was Coordinator for the group from 2003 to 2011.
At UTS, I was Course Director for three postgraduate degrees, starting with the Master of Facility Management 2003-05, followed by the Master of Property Development 2006-14, which I restructured and relaunched in 2008. In 2015 my new Master of Real Estate Investment course commenced and I finished as a Course Director in 2017.
