Zhen Chen

Zhen is the Lecturer in Facilities Management in the School of the Built Environment (SBE) at Heriot Watt University. He has interest in the science of sustainable built environment, and it has become the focuses and achievements in his academic and professional career started in 1990. He has received awarded grants for 16 research projects valued at more than £1.8 million, and engaged in 27 funded research projects with total value above £4.9 million. He has over 160 authored publications, including 25 papers collected by the Web of Knowledge, in diverse areas of engineering and management for the sustainable built environment. He is the founder and leader of the Megaproject Management research theme at Heriot-Watt University.

Zhen has shown in his research (Intelligent Methods in Construction Engineering (The only book available today that explores the theories and practice of construction informatics and automation together), 1997; Environmental Management in Construction, 2006; Multicriteria Decision-Making for the Sustainable Built Environment, 2007) that engineering led multidisciplinary innovative research is the key to the sustainable built environment, particularly in megaprojects; and it is a big canvas on which to work and it provides much scope for research and teaching.

His academic leadership in this area has been set up with particular recognised expertise in intelligent buildings and megaprojects, which incorporates multi-disciplinary research into engineering models and quantitative formulations by using methodological and lifecycle oriented approaches for more comprehensive understanding, accurate descriptions and advanced applications against problems and scenarios in various areas of the sustainable built environment at the highest level. He has worked with colleagues from different disciplines to foster innovations in the most influential world-leading research into the science of sustainable built environment, and to develop more productive collaborations with eminent practitioners from the global construction community. He is fully prepared to work in an inter- and transdisciplinary environment towards academic excellence.