The Expert Advisory Panel

The Role of the Panel

To ensure that the CIO Workshop effectively responds to the needs and priorities of its attendees, an advisory panel of their peers is created each year. This group provides direction and input on such things as format, location, timing, invitees, overall theme, and paper selection.  They are never remunerated for this service.  They serve because of an interest in the subject and a willingness to support their professional community - and to learn from them in turn!

2008 Expert Advisory Panel Members

Andrew Cowell is the UK Director of Operations for MWH. Andrew was EMEAI Director of Knowledge Management from 2001 to 2005. Andrew is a Chartered Civil Engineer, also a Member of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and has 26 years experience in water and environmental engineering. Since 1999 Andrew has been part of the global team at MWH developing and implementing knowledge management practices at a company, programme and project level. The KM implementation at MWH has featured in Business School Case Studies and won a number of awards. From the outset Andrew and the KM team at MWH have linked the people, IT and information management issues into the strategy. Andrew is a conference speaker on this subject, as well as a long term member of the Expert Advisory Panel.

Andrew Marks is Chief Information Officer, Tullow  Oil, PLC.   Andrew graduated as a geologist and pursued this within Oil & Gas for a number of years before stepping from 'IT customer' to 'IT supplier' as IT Programme Manager at LASMO plc. Subsequently, Andrew joined Accenture where he has both developed IT Strategy and led the implementation of large-scale Asset Management systems for Water, Gas and Electricity utility clients. He later moved to Parsons Brinckerhoff Limited where he was accountable for IT delivery across PB's EAME region. Andrew joined Tullow Oil as CIO in April 2007. With recent Exploration successes in Africa leading to major production facilities projects, Andrew has been working hard to influence decision-making across the full project and operations supply chain. As well as a speaker at the event, Andrew is a long term member of the Expert Advisory Panel.

Branka Fister is Head of Civil, Arrangement and Piping Engineering at Alstom and was recently Head of Engineering at Christ UPW AG. She began her career in transportation and moved from there to the oil and gas industry. She has strong knowledge of process engineering and the IT elements of major process production operations, and adds a welcome element of industrial know-how to the Panel.

John Bailey, Chief Information Officer EMEA, Bechtel is responsible for defining directions and business process re-engineering at that firm to suit today's challenges. With more than 17 years of experience spanning several major industrial sectors and an outstanding capability in AEC business operations, John adds significant domain and business expertise to the Expert Adivsory Panel, which he has supported as a long term member.

Mr.Avinash Sankholkar is Head of Research & Development  and  IT, Larsen Toubro Ltd. .A Chemical Engineering Graduate from IIT Bombay, he has a long experience in Design, Engineering, Commissioning Project Management of over 20 different Chemical Plants in India abroad. He has successfully completed EPC Projects for Petronas Malaysia, Foster Wheeler UK, and Bharat Petroleum, GSFC, Reliance and others. He is an active member of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers , devotes time to the development modernisation of Chemical Engineering Education, and is on the advisory boards of NMIMS the Bombay University

David Adam is employed by BP as Digital Solutions Manager for Projects and Engineering in their Exploration and Production segment, and is responsible for the Digital solutions in support of Major Capital Projects and Engineering.  He is also the champion for excellence in Project Information Management on Major Capital Projects.  He joined BP from one of the major contractor organisations (KBR) where he was the Information Management and IT Director for the offshore product line.  He has over 26 years experience of the offshore business with roles in engineering, information management, as well as IT systems development, delivery and support.  David has been a strong advocate for information standards supporting the information flow through major capital projects into operations.  Activities included being a founder member on the board of POSC/Caesar, chairman of the Epistle Implementation Group, and co-chairman of the ISO technical committee that facilitated the POSC/Caesar deliverables becoming an ISO standard.

Mike Williams is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Parsons Brickerhoff (PB), and is responsible for the oversight of the firm’s information systems and technologies worldwide, spanning the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia-Pacific regions. Mike has extensive experience in the delivery of information technology (IT) services within the engineering and construction industries both in the U.S. and in Latin America. He has over 20 years of broad-based experience in the management of IT, automation technologies, research &development programs and construction field operations. Mike earned his Doctorate and his Masters degrees in Civil Engineering at Stanford University., and is a Registered Civil Engineer in the State of California.

Michel Luypaert, now an independent practitioner, was Chief Information Officer at, Besix and prior to that was a CIO in the banking industry. His knowledge of the broader implications of financial transactions supplements his understanding of AEC industry technical operations, and adds to the capabilities of the Panel.

Tim Walton recently was Chief Information Officer (CIO) for CLM the Olympic Delivery Authority delivery partner for London 2012. His career has included executive and non-executive roles and has spanned operational, commercial, financial, e-business and IT assignments in civil and military aerospace, construction and design engineering. Tim is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered Engineer. He has been a member of various steering boards for industry initiatives and is also a guest speaker at Warwick and Oxford MBA Courses.

Hans van Otterloo is currently in independent practice in his home country of Holland, focused on emerging technologies.  He was during his tenure on the Panel Chief Information Officer  of ARCADIS B.V. since 2001. Before turning to IT he was responsible for ARCADIS’ operations in Asia and the Middle East, and prior to that spent several years on assignments in both Africa and Asia. Hans studied economics at the University of  California and Cambridge University. As CIO of ARCADIS Hans was responsible for merging 7 IT units into one central IT department. A strong drive for both customer satisfaction and cost control led Gartner to qualify the department’s performance in 2004 as ‘best of class’. Hans is married with two daughters.

Charles Rowney, who before establishing his own practice was a CKO in a major AEC firm and remains active in knowledge and information management enterprise solutions.  He is presently an independent consultant (ACR, LLC) who practices in the AEC space, providing services in the area of solution integration, bridging IT capabilities and service community requirements. He has been a member of or particiapnt in the CIO Workshop since its inception, and was a past participant and organizer in the US based CIO Forum.

Past Expert Advisory Panel Members

Anders Thostrup was Head of IT Strategy for Shell Exploration and Production, and joined that firm in 1994 as a facilities engineer after graduating as M.Eng from Bristol University in the U.K. Anders is currently the IT strategy and innovation manager for Shell's upstream projects group and information management discipline lead for upstream facilities engineering.  His team provides IM and IT solutions to projects. Key deliverables include an Engineering Information Specification - a global standard for Shell - and a portfolio of procedures and systems to manage the complex flows of information in projects.

Scott Farquhar is CIO at Bovis Lend Lease. He has been a Workshop attendee in the past, and has elected to join the Panel as a full member this year. His insights into IT challenges in the context of a major project management and construction company such as Bovis provides a significant element of large scale project planning and information management experience to the Panel.

Björn Paulsson during his participation on the Expert Advisory Panel was Head of Track Division for Banverket, the Swedish rail administration and has been with Banverket since they started 1988. Björn is responsible for IT for Technical systems for the non production units (Banverket Consulting and Banverket production) and for systems used both by the non production units and the production units. He is responsible for defining the IT strategy for the technical department at the HQ.

Alan Hodgkinson graduated with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has over 25 years experience in IT. He is a specialist in the automation of business processes, with a specific focus in document workflow for construction projects. Prior to founding SoftXS, Mr. Hodgkinson worked for a number of high-tech startup companies and participated in numerous projects, including the automation of the Swiss Stock Exchange.

Maurice Tayeh remains a source of advice and ideas for the Workshop, and during his time on the Panel was Technip's group chief information officer. His primary responsibilities include IT strategic directions and business process re-engineering to suit today's challenges. With more than 19 years of experience spanning several major industries, Maurice is a member of the Process Power Client Community (P2C2) International Advisory Council.

Andreas Rebetzky was Chief Information Officer with M+W Zander when he served on the EAP. From 2000 until May 2005, Andreas was managing director of the Teraport GmbH in Stuttgart, a subsidiary of M+W Zander Holding AG. Rebetzky studied at the university of Tubingen and at the ETH in Zurich, where he graduated in 1987 with a diploma in physics. He subsequently received his doctorat in extraterrestrial physics at Garching near Munich. After graduating in 1989, Rebetzky was founder and chief executive of the company Science + computing GmbH Tubingen, which was a consultancy for technical scientific research and development environments. His field of responsibility ranged from the development of software to sales and marketing. Key projects included the assembly, or the rearrangement, of IT services in the development branches of DaimlerChrysler, BMW and Infineon as well as to develop simulation software.

Sami Abdulgani General Manager of Saudi Consulting Services,, in Saudi Arabia at the time he participated in the Panel. He received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering in 1981 from Michigan State University and an M.Sc. in Energy Engineering (Power) in 1983 from Western Michigan State University, USA. He was elected President of the Project Management Institute – Arabian Gulf Chapter in the year 2000 and served two-terms as President and still serving as Trustee. He is the Chairman of Saudization Committee and Member of Strategic Projects in the Chamber of Commerce. Currently he is also Executive Vice President, managing and directing an engineering workforce of more than 1,500 professional staff.