Janaka Y. Ruwanpura

Canada Research Chair in Project Management Systems view>>>

Professor

Director of the Centre for Project Management Excellence

P.Eng

PQS (Professional Quantity Surveyor with the Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors)

MRICS (Professor Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, UK)

• Phone: 220-6892
• Fax: 282-7026
• E-mail: janaka [at] ucalgary [dot] ca

BSc. Hons. (Quantity Surveying) University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka - 1992

MSc. (Construction Management) Arizona State University - 1997

PhD. (Construction Engineering and Management) University of Alberta - 2001

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Awards / Accolades

Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura, a former US Fulbright Scholar, is a Professor and the Canada Research Chair in Project Management Systems in the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is the Founding Director of the Centre for Project Management Excellence at the University of Calgary and has been the Director of Project Management since 2005. 

His contribution as a faculty member of the University of Calgary highlights many teaching, research, service and internationalization initiatives and contributions.Dr. Ruwanpura has developed many best practices and tools that have been successfully implemented in the construction industry for productivity improvement, project planning, risk management, decision analysis and sustainability. Dr. Ruwanpura commenced a major Canadian Construction Productivity Improvement research project at the University of Calgary from 2003 which developed many best practices and tools including  i-Booth (c), the innovative information kiosk, to improve productivity of construction projects. He has published over 160 technical papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He has also delivered over 100 workshops in the last 4 years to train the construction industry personnel to use the new tools and best practices developed through his research project on “Top Ten Targets for Improving Construction Productivity.” Calgary Construction Association honoured Dr. Ruwanpura with a prestigious “Industry Partnership Award” in 2012 for his contribution to Canadian Construction Industry in terms collaboration, innovation and transformation.  He has brought over four million dollars of research funding and graduated 7 Ph.D.s and 14 M.Sc. students over the 10 years.

As the Director of Project Management, he has brought several new initiatives to the program to boost teaching, training, research, internationalization and professional services. This includes offering M.Eng. programs of the University of Calgary in Asia and Middle East and developing a two-tier “Project Management Certification (PMC)” program for industry professionals. Dr. Ruwanpura has been recognized with many awards for teaching, research, service, graduate education and internationalization at the University of Calgary.

He is a licensed professional engineer in Alberta and a professional quantity surveyor both in Canada and Sri Lanka (fellow).  He is also member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering. He served as the Secretary of the Construction Division of CSCE (2003-5). As the Chair of the Student Affairs of CSCE (2004-08), he brought several new initiatives to improve the student services, awards and to expand membership. Dr. Ruwanpura is also the convenor of the International Institute for Infrastructure, Renewal and Reconstruction which is a multi-university (18) international consortium which provides overall leadership in research, education, planning, design and implementation for mitigation of the impact of natural disasters and infrastructure renewal and reconstruction projects in tsunami affected or underdeveloped regions.

Dr. Ruwanpuwa has industry experience as a project management consultant for many construction projects in the areas of project management, project planning, project control, risk management and productivity improvement in oil and gas owner, engineering, construction and telecommunication companies as well as municipalities and utility companies in Canada and many overseas countries in North America, Asia and Middle East. 

 Updated: April 2012

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