Editor’s Note

We are welcoming Dr. Mehmet Egemen Ozbek to our editorial board as an assistant specialty editor of contracting. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Construction Management at Colorado State University (CSU). After receiving his B.S. degree in civil engineering in 2002 from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, Dr. Ozbek went to Virginia Tech to pursue graduate degrees in civil engineering with a focus on construction engineering and management. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering in 2004 and 2007 respectively. Before joining the faculty of CSU, Dr. Ozbek worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Highway Asset Management Programs at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Ozbek’s research interests are infrastructure asset management, performance and productivity measurement-improvement-benchmarking, performance-based contracting, public-private partnerships, project delivery, and construction contracts. His work has been published in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, TRB Transportation Research Record, and an ASCE special publication titled Alternative Project Delivery, Procurement, and Contracting Methods for Highways. Dr. Ozbek teaches a course titled “Construction Contracts and Project Administration” and advises graduate students at CSU as well as teaching construction management courses as a visiting faculty member for the summer session in the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering Department in the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Ozbek is an active reviewer for five journals, three of which are ASCE publications. He serves on two ASCE national committees: the ASCE Construction Institute Management Practices in Construction Committee and ASCE Transportation and Development Institute Infrastructure Systems Committee.

CSU is one of the nation’s leading research universities. It was founded in 1870 as the Colorado Agricultural College, six years before the Colorado Territory became a state. Last year, CSU awarded degrees to more than 5,000 graduates, and this year, it attracted nearly $300 million in research funding. Colorado State is a land-grant institution and a Carnegie Doctoral/Research University-Extensive.

The construction management program at CSU is one of the top ranked in the nation. Since its inception in 1946, more than 4,000 students have graduated, many of them going on to become leaders in their field as presidents and CEOs of major construction companies. The program is accredited by the American Council for Construction Education. The academic program is interdisciplinary, with course requirements in business, engineering, and the humanities as well as applied courses in construction science and construction management. The focus is on the integration of innovative management systems and other technologies into the construction process. These requirements provide a wide scope of educational experiences and create a much broader range of career options for graduates.