News

The Digital Roads of the Future initiative is looking to recruit a Programme Manager to ensure the smooth administration and running of the programmes.The Programme Manager will administer the grants and associated human, physical and digital resources of the Construction Information Technology (CIT) Group led by Professor Ioannis Brilakis. The Pro…

Grace Newey is a digital transformation specialist at AtkinsRéalis and part of Cohort 11 of the Construction Engineering Masters (CEM). Throughout her tenure, she has actively promoted innovation and positive change, with a focus on digital transformation.Grace recently completed her CEM dissertation viva and hopes to graduate this summer. She desc…

Asitha Rathnayake, a PhD candidate at the Laing O’Rourke Centre supervised by Prof Campbell Middleton, presented his research work at the Construction Institute and Construction Research Congress Joint Conference 2024 held in Des Moines, Iowa. Asitha’s PhD focuses on measuring and improving construction productivity. The lack of growth in productiv…

Brian Sheil, Laing O’Rourke Associate Professor, is one of the founders and the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of JoltSynSor, a spin-out that pioneers a unique sensor technology.This technology is capable of transforming structures themselves into hyper-accurate sensors by using a novel algorithm. This breakthrough translates raw strain measurement…

We are delighted to share the good news that our former PhD student Kasun Kariyawasam has won the prestigious Collaborate to Innovate Award 2023 in the Information, Data and Connectivity Category from The Engineer UK with the project "Innovative Pre-Straining Tools and BOFDA Technology assessment: A Transnational Leap in infrastructure Monitoring".…

Women in the construction industry face unique challenges, including stereotypes, bias and sometimes a lack of access to opportunities. However, many women have persevered and excelled in various roles within the sector.Construction Engineering Masters alumna and Associate Partner at Foster + Partners Liz Ng believes that creating a workplace that …

Prof Campbell Middleton, Dr Olivia Remes and CEM student Rachel Blair Winkler shed light on the prevalence of key mental health-related conditions in construction and provide a foundation for further investigations that may be used to inform future research, workplace interventions and policy.The paper ‘A Review on the Prevalence of Poor Mental Hea…

Over the past few months, Laing O'Rourke Professor Ioannis Brilakis, along Dr Kyriakos Kantarakias and Alexander Gillies, have been building a new platform to transform information exchange and management in the construction industry. Our dynamic graph cloud solution aims to link legacy databases and authoring tools, and over time allow for synchro…

Kasun Kariyawasam, PhD student between 2016 and 2020, was supervised by Professor Campbell Middleton, and his research focused on developing an efficient and cost-effective structural health monitoring system for bridge scour detection. His PhD was fully funded by Gates Cambridge Trust.The team I put together at that time included some of the fines…

Laing O’Rourke Centre Professor Ioannis Brilakis was featured in the BBC's response to the AA report released to coincide with the UK's National Pothole Day on Monday, 15th January 2024.The BBC visited the University of Cambridge to view demonstrations of how the Digital Roads of the Future initiative is finding a way to automatically detect early …

The project Digital Twins For Tailings Dams has won the Data Sciences & AI-Enabled Solutions prize at the COP28's Prototypes for Humanity initiative, which finds innovative solutions for social and environmental issues.The research project Digital Twins 4 Tailings Dams, is a satellite-based early warning system to monitor the stability of tailings …

We are delighted to share that Dr Kasun Kariyawasam's research project on fibre optic monitoring has been named as a finalist under two categories for the prestigious Collaborate to Innovate (C2I) Awards 2023, organised by The Engineer UK.The shortlist for The Engineer’s eighth annual C2I Awards is an inspiring reminder of the UK’s depth of enginee…

The Horizon Europe D-HYDROFLEX project held its kick-off meeting in Brussels last September, aiming at advancing excellence in research on digital technology for hydropower, paving the way towards more efficient, more sustainable, and more competitive hydropower plants in modern power markets.The University of Cambridge, represented by Prof Ioannis…

Dr Danny Murguia, Research Associate at the Laing O’Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology, gave a presentation entitled “Digitalisation and industrialisation for productivity improvement” at the Rio Construção Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 19-21 September 2023. His keynote talk was part of a round table discussi…

Students undertaking the Construction Engineering Master of Studies degree (CEM) presented their evidence-based research at the 11th annual dissertation conference on Friday, 15 September 2023. The CEM dissertation conference is becoming a critical conference for the industry, showing continued growth year-on-year as a highly relevant and targeted …