Naomi Brookes, Professor of Complex Project Management

'Megaprojects: Why do they fail, why does this matter and what we can do about it?'

Megaprojects are extremely large-scale investment projects that typically cost more than $1 billion. Megaprojects are united by their extreme complexity (both in technical and human terms) and by a long record of poor delivery. Their inability to be designed appropriately and delivered on time and to budget has profound implications not only for the construction organisations delivering them but also for the client organisations commissioning them (which are often governments spending public money.)

In this, her inaugural lecture, Naomi will review the work that has been undertaken up to now in trying to manage megaprojects better. Naomi will then speculate on what we will need to learn in the future in order to make sure that we build megaprojects that work for clients, constructors and society as a whole.

Profile

Professor Naomi Brookes holds a Chair in Complex Project Management in the School of Civil Engineering in the University of Leeds. Naomi has spent her career dealing with complex engineering projects both as a practitioner and an academic. Naomi graduated from the University Of Nottingham with a first class honours degree in Production Engineering and Management. Naomi began her working career in the aerospace industry working on new product development project management with Rolls-Royce. Whilst working with Rolls-Royce, she took the unusual step of taking a PhD part-time with Imperial College. This ignited her love for research in engineering management and she has now worked in both engineering faculties and business schools in pursuit of this aim. She has maintained strong industrial links holding positions as the Director of the Centre for Project Management Practice at Aston University and the Director of the European Construction Institute at Loughborough University. Naomi has over seventy publications in the field of engineering project management and has initiated and delivered research grants from a wide range of funding organisations.