Professor Jason Underwood

Current positions

Professor Digital Built Environments & Construction ICT; Programme Director MSc. BIM & Digital Built Environments

Biography

Jason Underwood is a Professor in Construction ICT & Digital Built Environments and Programme Director of the MSc. in Building Information Modelling (BIM) & Digital Built Environments within the School of Science, Engineering & Environment at the University of Salford. He holds a BEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from Liverpool John Moores University, a Master’s in Psychology from Liverpool Hope University, and a PhD from the University of Salford. His doctoral thesis was on ‘Integrating Design and Construction to Improve Constructability through an Effective Usage of IT’. He is a Chartered Member of both the Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors (MCInstCES) and The British Psychological Society (CPsychol), and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Jason’s background is a combination of civil/structural engineering and construction ICT. He has over twenty five years’ research experience in the areas of concurrent engineering, integrated and collaborative computing in construction, product and building information modelling, digital transformation in the built environment, digital built environments, collaborative working and behaviours, BIM maturity assessment, BIM education and training in the development of BIM capabilities, and organisational e-readiness towards delivering strategic value from ICT/BIM investment. Through leading/involvement in both UK and EU funded research/KTP/KE projects, he has published extensively.

He is actively engaged in the digital transformation of the UK construction industry. Jason is the present Chair of the UK BIM Academic Forum and Director of Construct IT For Business, an industry-led non-profit making collaborative membership-based network. His affiliations at a national level include the Centre For Digital Built Britain, BIM Task Group Education & Training working group, UK BIM Alliance/NIMA, Scottish BIM Delivery Academia Group, Behaviours4Collaboration Group, Constructing Excellence Digital Construction Group, and Nuclear Institute Digital Special Interest Group, and, at a local level, with the Northwest Regional BIM Hub, Northwest Construction Hub BIM Special Interest Group, and Constructing Excellence Manchester Committee. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Digital Innovation in the Built Environments (IJDIBE).

Areas of research

Concurrent Engineering, Integrated and Collaborative Computing in Construction, Product and Building Information Modelling, Digital Built Environments, Digital Transformation, Digital Twin, Collaborative Working and Behaviours, BIM Maturity Assessment, BIM Education and Training, Organisational e-Readiness

Areas of supervision

Digital twin in enabling Lean strategic facility management, Addressing security threats of information flow in BIM and Lean Construction integration, Automated optimization of reinforcement detailing of RC frames using a multi-objective technique in BIM, AI in project management, Digital twin integration to projects of Nigerian oil and gas sector towards optimising decision making