I am the Director of the Management of Projects (MoP) MSc programme in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE), and I teach theories and practices of Management of Projects to undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students. I had my PhD degree in the Management of Projects (2005) and MSc degree in Engineering Project Management EPM (2000) both from the School of MACE at the University of Manchester, and Diploma degree in Economics (1996) and BSc degree in Civil Engineering (1995) both from the University of Aleppo, Syria. Prior to joining MACE, I worked as an academic teaching and researching different areas of Management of Projects in two main academic institutes, with two different but closely interrelated settings: civil engineering, and business administration. These include: the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Aleppo in Syria (Lecturer), and Institute Dar Basile-Alep working in partnership with SKEMA Business School in France (Lecturer & EMBA Programme Director), previously known as ‘ESC Lille’. I am currently a lecturer in the ‘Management of Projects MoP’ at the School of MACE at the University of Manchester. I am the unit coordinator for MACE12112 ‘Civil Engineering Practice - UG’, and also involved in the delivery of MACE60061 ‘Management of Projects - MSc’, MACE60092 ‘Construction Project Management Professional Practice - MSc’, and MACE300461 ‘Operations Management – UG’.  

Research-wise, I often view construction data/problems as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) that require a multilevel processing to support data-driven planning & control and decision-making. The "micro-meso-macro" framework has a great potential for embracing complexity of construction data/systems and informing data organisation to facilitate a multilevel planning & control. I also believe that new Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and innovative ICTs offer a great opportunity to enhance connectivity across industries and promote automated planning & control, which are the two main features of Industry 4.0. However, the whole situation is further complicated by well-established beliefs and practices, and current structures of construction networks that limit its ability to improve performance. In alignment with this theoretically-informed thinking, I have supervised several MSc-by-research and PhD projects in different areas of Management of Projects. This has resulted in several academic papers. I am currently looking at Circular Economy CE in construction, from the transformational complex systems rather than from the technological linear systems point of view, to identify issues and challenges associated with the transformation to CE. Hence, my current list of research interests includes: 

• Circular Economy (CE) in Construction
• Risk Management in Construction Projects
• Construction Communications
• Virtual Teams (VTs) in Construction
• Contractor Prequalification & Bid Evaluation
• Decision-making Methods in general.