Jennifer Whyte

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Jennifer Whyte
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Loughborough University
Scientific career
Institutions University of Sydney
Imperial College London
Stanford University

University of Reading

University of Sussex

Jennifer Whyte is Director of the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership and Head of School of Project Management at the University of Sydney, Australia. [1] Her focus is on working with industry, policy and government to improve the way projects are conceived, set-up, delivered and add value. She had led research on systems integration, construction transformation, and project analytics.

Contents

She retains a role as a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London. [2] where she was Director of the Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation, [3] which aims to bring systems engineering and innovation to built infrastructure. Her research interests are in the digital design and delivery of major infrastructure projects. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and held the Laing O'Rourke and Royal Academy of Engineering chair in Systems Integration (2015-2021).

Education

Whyte has a BA from Cambridge in 1994, and completed her PhD at Loughborough University in 2000.

Research and career

Professor Whyte is Head of School of Project Management and Director of the John Grill Institute of Project Leadership at the University of Sydney. She joined University of Sydney in 2021 and retains a fractional appointment as a Professor at Imperial College London.

She was previously a Co-Director of the Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation at Imperial College London. Whyte joined the Department of Civil Engineering at Imperial College London in 2016 to lead the Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation, which is developing the next generation of systems engineering tools and methods for infrastructure. She was previously at the University of Reading joining in 2007, and in 2010, founded a Design Innovation Research Centre, with £1.25m funding by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She held an Advanced Institute of Management Fellowship. Previously she was a Senior Research Fellow in Imperial College Business School, working with Professor David Gann from 2003-2007. Before that she worked with the same team at SPRU, University of Sussex, from 2000-2003 on research projects including work on design quality indicators.

She is a member of Construction Leadership Council and sits on the UK's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund 'Transforming Construction' advisory board, leads a strategic theme in the Alan Turing Institute/Lloyds Register Foundation's 'Data Centric Engineering Programme', and in 2018 gave evidence to the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology on offsite manufacturing for construction. [4] She co-curated the World Economic Forum (WEF) 'Engineering and Construction' transformation map. She sits on the Institution of Civil Engineers' Digital Transformation Panel. She was previously a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Research and Innovation Group.

Publications

Whyte has written more than 40 journal papers, publishing in journals including Research Policy, [5] International Journal of Project Management, [6] Organization Studies, [7] Design Studies, [8] and Automation in Construction. [9] In 2018, she published Virtual Reality and the Built Environment (second edition) with Dragana Nikolić.

Selected articles

Whyte, Jennifer; Comi, Alice; Mosca, Luigi (2023) “Simultaneously Here and There: https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877231217311 Situating online organizing in our embodied material practices Organization Theory, 4 https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877231217311

Related Research Articles

Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Value engineering</span>

Value engineering (VE) is a systematic analysis of the functions of various components and materials to lower the cost of goods, products and services with a tolerable loss of performance or functionality. Value, as defined, is the ratio of function to cost. Value can therefore be manipulated by either improving the function or reducing the cost. It is a primary tenet of value engineering that basic functions be preserved and not be reduced as a consequence of pursuing value improvements. The term "value management" is sometimes used as a synonym of "value engineering", and both promote the planning and delivery of projects with improved performance

Open innovation is a term used to promote an information age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs. The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have been noted and discussed as far back as the 1960s, especially as it pertains to interfirm cooperation in R&D. Use of the term 'open innovation' in reference to the increasing embrace of external cooperation in a complex world has been promoted in particular by Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor and faculty director of the Center for Open Innovation of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, and Maire Tecnimont Chair of Open Innovation at Luiss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Building science</span>

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<i>Research Policy</i> (journal) Academic Journal

Research Policy is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier on behalf of the Science Policy Research Unit. It was established by British economist Christopher Freeman in 1971 and is regarded as the leading journal in the field of innovation studies. It is listed as one of the 50 journals used by the Financial Times to compile its business-school research ranks.

Project complexity is the property of a project which makes it difficult to understand, foresee, and keep under control its overall behavior, even when given reasonably complete information about the project system. With a lens of systems thinking, project complexity can be defined as an intricate arrangement of the varied interrelated parts in which the elements can change and evolve constantly with an effect on the project objectives. The identification of complex projects is specifically important to multi-project engineering environments.

References

  1. "Staff Profile". The University of Sydney. Retrieved 15 June 2022.
  2. "Home - Professor Jennifer Whyte". Imperial.ac.uk. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  3. "Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation". Imperial College London. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  4. "Off-site manufacture for construction". Science and Technology Committee (Lords). Parliament.gov. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  5. Research Policy. Journals.elsevier.com. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  6. "International Journal of Project Management". Journals.elsevier.com. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  7. "SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research". SAGE Journals. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  8. Design Studies. Journals.elsevier.com. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  9. Automation in Construction. Journals.elsevier.com. Retrieved 19 January 2019.