CanConstructNZ is a research and development team of teams. Our three leaders are Professors Sutrisna and Wilkinson and Rod Cameron. They support six special interest teams with 21 members, many with subject crossovers. We have an industry advisory board of twelve whom we can call on for review of our work and a team of five international academic advisors.
Our Academic Research teams are divided into broad project types as Infrastructure and Transport led by Assoc Professor Scheepbouwer, Services and Utilities led by Professor Potangaroa, Residential, led by Professor Rotimi, and Non-residential (including Institutional) led by Doctor Domingo. Our Data Modeling and Inference team is led by Assoc Professor Jelodar and is responsible for developing the Comparator Mechanism. Our work in Shocks and Stresses is led by Professor Potangaroa. Our Database Platform and Management team is also responsible for external relations with the government, local government, the sector, and our industry advisory board and is led by Rod Cameron. Coordination with the Workforce Research Forum is led by Doctor Macgregor of BRANZ.
Dr Alice Chang-Richards is a Co-Leader of the Resilience Team and a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Auckland. She was a visiting scholar at Kyoto University (Japan) and the University of Delaware (USA) in 2019. Her main research interests include disaster resilience, climate change adaption, construction technology, sustainability, smart cities and smart housing. Alice won the 2016 University of Auckland Early Career Research Excellence Award and 2015 Project Management Institute New Zealand Research Achievement Award. She has led several research projects funded by the National Science Challenge (NSC), BRANZ and QuakeCoRE.
Elrasheid Elkhidir is a civil engineer with more than 12 years of Professional experience across different construction sectors, from site engineering to project management to humanitarian construction. He is passionate about construction management and disaster resilience and currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Built Environment as a member of the CanConstructNZ project, with focus on the pipeline providers in the “residential” and the “services & utilities” parts of the sector.
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2024 PHD Summary
Professor Regan Potangaroa is the leader of the Resilience team and a distinguished scholar and visionary leader in the field of disaster resilience and recovery. With extensive expertise in structural engineering and humanitarian response, he has made significant contributions to the development of innovative strategies and technologies for mitigating the impact of natural disasters on communities worldwide. Prof. Potangaroa’s pioneering research, coupled with his practical experience, has empowered numerous regions to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from catastrophic events. Recognized for his unwavering commitment to community engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration, he continues to inspire the next generation of resilient infrastructure professionals through his academic mentorship and active involvement in international disaster management initiatives.
Robert is a registered architect and project manager, with International professional practice experience in public and private sectors, including education and heritage property portfolios; tropical island resort hotel and residences; urban development ($2B new town); mixed-use commercial buildings; aid projects for school and health facilities on remote Pacific island sites. As CanConstructNZ researcher, PhD candidate and Tutor (Construction), School of Built Environment, Massey University, research focuses on large, complex infrastructural building projects including New Dunedin Hospital ($1.68B) case study, investigating capacity and capability, resilience, and sustainability, of the NZ building construction sector. 2024 PHD Summary
Prof. Suzanne Wilkinson is Research Leader of the programme and a Research Professor of Construction Management – School of Built Environment and Associate Dean (Research), College of Sciences Massey University. Suzanne’s research spans the topics of construction sector organisation, management and the impacts of shocks and stresses on the construction sector. Prof. Wilkinson has been an advisor to many organisations on resilience building including Auckland Council and Advisor to the Executive team at Hunter Water (Aust.) She is currently leading research into improving outcomes of shocks and stresses on the construction sector under CanConstructNZ.
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Jaleh (Roja) Sadeghi is a member of the Comparator Mechanism team and a PhD student at Massey University’s School of Built Environment, specializing in architectural engineering and computational design. Her research focuses on developing innovative computational solutions to address complexities in the construction industry. With a strong interest in emergent technologies and complex system modelling, she employs agent-based modelling and reinforcement learning techniques to investigate and analyze the structure of New Zealand’s construction sector. Jaleh’s contributions include the creation of a sophisticated tool that measures the gap between the sector resources and the pipeline of construction projects, driving advancements in efficiency and resource allocation. Her work aims to revolutionize the construction industry through technology-driven approaches.
Prof James Rotimi is the Leader of the Pipeline Team and is Professor of Construction Economics and Management at the School of Built Environment, Massey University. He is also visiting Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. James’s research is centered around enhancing performance in the construction industry, with a specific focus on integrating the supply chain and optimizing the attainment of construction and project deliverables. Prof Rotimi’s research theme aligns with the objectives outlined in the NZ Construction Sector Transformation Plan, particularly in areas of construction business performance and survivability, procurement practices, and migrant workforce and immigration policies. He publishes extensively and is the Founding Editor of the renowned International Journal of Construction Supply Chain Management IJCSCM.
Dr An Le is a researcher in CanConstructNZ. Her main role is supporting the Postdoc in data collection and data analysis. She is a lecturer in Quantity Surveying at Massey University with more than ten years of experience in teaching and researching. Her expertise is quantity surveying and construction management, focusing on cost management and stakeholder collaboration. Her research interests include, but are not limited to, sustainable construction, human resources and well-being, collaboration, and net-zero buildings.
Chinthaka is a Senior Tutor in Quantity Surveying and Construction Law at Massey University, with more than ten years of experience working in the construction industry in Oman and Qatar. His research interests include construction law, dispute resolution, knowledge management, and construction cost management. Chinthaka is a Junior Research Officer in CanConstructNZ with his focus in data collection and analysis.
Dr Niluka Domingo is a Senior Lecturer in Quantity Surveying at the School of Built Environment, Massey University, leading the team studying the vertical construction segment of the sector. Her experience spans over 15 years, having worked in Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, she has contributed significantly to advancing the knowledge within her discipline, with cultivated expertise as a distinguished researcher in the field of built environment. She is conducting cutting-edge multi-disciplinary research aimed at enhancing the capacity and capability of the construction industry, with the ultimate goal of achieving a more efficient, productive, and sustainable sector.
Taofeeq is a PhD researcher. His previous work includes as a research assistant at the University of Malaysia Pahang, the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and Massey. His interests include organizational sustainability, strategic management and organizational control. He has published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Safety Science, Journal of Safety Research, Sustainability, International Journal of Construction Management, Critical Review in Biotechnology, Applied System Innovation, and Journal of Engineering, Design, and Technology. His research for the programme focuses on “Enhancing the Delivering of Construction Pipeline Projects Through Evaluating the Quality of Demand-Side Information and Strategic Decision-Making in Construction Organizations.
Dr. Azam Zavvari is a member of the Comparator Mechanism team and a researcher specializing in data analysis in construction. Her research primarily focuses on modelling the supply and demand dynamics to estimate the capacity and capability of the construction market in New Zealand. She is also actively studying the impact of external macro-environmental factors on the construction industry. Understanding how these external factors affect the construction industry can provide valuable insights for policymakers, construction companies, and other stakeholders involved in the sector.
Prof. Monty Sutrisna is the Science Leader of the programme and Professor of Construction and Project Management, and Head of School – School of Built Environment at Massey University. As an active academic researcher in the built environment domain focusing on automation and IT in construction, productivity, sustainability, systems, project management and process mapping for more than twenty years of research experience in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Prof. Sutrisna has been championing close. collaboration between industry and academia to create synergies and solving challenges facing the society.
Dr. Mostafa Babaeian Jelodar is the leader of the Comparator Mechanism team and a Senior Lecturer in Construction Engineering and Management and the Academic Lead for the School. Mostafa will include data modelling and analysis, inference mechanisms and AI tools to predict demand and supply trends in CanConstructNZ work.
He also has expertise in modern methods, off-site manufacturing, application of new technologies, productivity, and Decision Support Systems (DSS) in construction and leads the “Modern Methods of Construction and Automation in Built Environment” research group at the School.
Dr. Teo Susnjak is a member of the Comparator Mechanism team and a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Information Technology at Massey University, New Zealand. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science, specializing in machine learning, from Massey University.
Currently, he holds the position of Subject Lead of Data Science and the Coordinator for the Master of Analytics degree at Massey University. He brings his extensive industry experience as a Machine Learning Analyst to solve real-world problems using machine learning approaches. His recent research has focused on the utilization of Large Language Models for tasks such as generating data visualizations through natural language, fine-tuning data visualizations using multilingual text, sentiment analysis of scientific literature, and exploring the implications of generative AI technologies in online exam integrity. His work showcases the potential applications and challenges associated with leveraging Large Language Models in various domains.
Rod Cameron is Co-Lead of the programme and a Chartered Professional Engineer experienced in project management, project direction and owner representative roles in Australia and New Zealand, based on international experience in civil and structural engineering and construction. His work has been centred on property, building and construction and industry within large and small organizations. Particular successes have been achieved in the management of diverse, multi– disciplinary functions, in the activities of complex projects, in contract administration, in owner representation, in value management and in capture, dissemination and new directions from lessons learnt.
Dr Casimir MacGregor is Principal Social Scientist and Programme Leader of the Transition to a Zero Carbon Built Environment research programme at BRANZ. His research is focused on enabling innovation, systems and behaviour change within the construction sector. He has served on a number of expert advisory groups, such as the Construction Sector Accord’s Construction Sector Environment Roadmap for Action.
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