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Professor Keith Clarke CBE

Laing O'Rourke Centre Lecture Series Guest speaker Professor Keith Clarke CBE gave a lecture on 21 May 2013.

On 21 May 2013 - Laing O'Rourke Centre Lecture Series guest speaker 'Professor Keith Clarke CBE' presented his vision on how 'to move data at effectively no cost to multiple people and locations combined with the ever increasing need for an efficient built environment, which at the same time is transitioning to a low carbon economy, gives engineers the most exciting decade ahead since the Industrial Revolution. The fatal flaw may be the fact that we remain human, vain, tribal and insular. What are the organisational and human aspects that system engineering can bring.'

Biography

Professor Keith Clarke CBE, FRAEng, FICE, RIBA

– Former Chief Executive WS Atkins Plc, UK’s largest design & engineering consultancy with more than 17,000 staff and turnover of £1.5bn in 2011
– Advisor to Qatari Minister of Municipalities & Urban Planning with More than 30 years experience of working in the Gulf & Middle East
– Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
– Member of two Advisory Board’s at Oxford University; The Programme for the Future of Cities, and The Environmental Change Institute

Keith Clarke was Chief Executive of WS Atkins plc, the UK’s largest design and Engineering Consultancy for 8 years to July 2011. During his leadership he steered the Group back to being a high performing business, successfully navigated a world recession and charted a course for growth. He supported the Group’s investment in the Middle East, where key projects included the Dubai Metro, and he was also instrumental in Atkins’ decision to become the first engineering company to be an official sponsor of an Olympic Games for the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games, a project the Company has gone on to delivering more than 450,000 hours of work on. In addition Keith is credited with shaping Atkins to respond to opportunities created by the low carbon economy, something which he continued to lead as Director of Sustainability and Chairman of Atkins’ Middle East business until April 2012.

At the forefront of encouraging the built environment sector to embrace Carbon Critical thinking in response to the urgent challenge of climate change Keith has long been an advocate for positioning carbon as a core decision making factor in the way we plan, design and procure capital projects. In 2009 Keith was appointed by UK Secretary of State for Business as interim chair of the Construction Innovation and Growth team (IGT) in September 2009 to review how the UK construction industry could be “fit for purpose” in a low carbon future. The report was delivered in November 2010 by the Government’s chief construction adviser, Paul Morrell. Subsequent to this work Keith delivered the prestigious ICE Brunel Lecture to audiences around the world on the theme of creating a low carbon society.

Having left Atkins Keith continues to provide senior level advice to Minister of Municipalities & Urban Planning in the State of Qatar and is a Non-Executive Director and board member at a number of leading industry institutions including, the Built Environment Innovation Centre at Imperial College, London, the British Standards Institute, the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, and the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. Keith is also patron of the Environmental Industries Commission and has Honorary Fellowships from Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Structural Engineers and Cardiff University. He was also the Chairman of the UK Construction Industry Council (CIC) from 2008-10.

Keith was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list 2011.