KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Paul W. Jowitt, CBE

Paul Jowitt is Professor of Civil Engineering Systems and Executive Director of the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology at Heriot Watt University.

He is Past President (2009-10) of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Additonally, he is a Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College. He was a Board Member of Scottish Water from 2002-2008, and a non-Executive Director of United Utilities Water from 2009-2011.

Paul Jowitt’s major consultancy and research interests concern the issues of sustainable development, risk, and the development of systems-level solutions within civil engineering, the built environment, and environmental management.

Paul Jowitt was the lead investigator in a collaborative consortium between Heriot-Watt University and Cambridge University on the ISSUES Project (ISSUES - Implementation Strategies for Sustainable Urban Environment Systems) to facilitate knowledge transfer for EPSRC’s Sustainable Urban Environments Programme. He was also a principal investigator on the SWARD Project (SWARD - Sustainable Water Resource Asset Decisions), developing a multi-criteria analysis/risk management methodology to assess the relative sustainability of water and wastewater systems. In 2008, he co-authored the paper “Making Asset Investment Decisions for Wastewater Systems that Include Sustainability”, published in the ASCE Journal of Environmental Engineering, which was awarded the 2008 International Water Association (IWA) biennial prize for Research Excellence in Support of Sustainable Urban Water Management

Paul Jowitt chaired the ICE Presidential Commission - “Engineering without Frontiers” - to examine society’s expectations of the civil engineer in the 21st Century and the engineer’s contribution to meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals. He was the author of the ICE’s 6th Brunel International Lecture “Engineering Civilisation form the Shadows” which addressed the twin issues of Poverty and Climate Change. He was a member of the International Jury for the Mondialogo Engineering Awards (sponsored by UNESCO and Daimler-Chrysler).

He is President of the Commonwealth Engineers Council and Chairman of the charity Engineers Against Poverty. Professor Jowitt is also a trustee of the Forth Bridges Visitor Centre Trust and The Steamship Sir Walter Scott Trust. Additionally, he is a founder member of "The Edge" - an ICE/RIBA/CIBSE Ginger Group created to increase public and political awareness of the role of engineers and architects.