Reston, Va. (ASCE) -- Raymond E. Levitt, Ph.D., Dist.M.ASCE, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, was recently named a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Formerly known as honorary membership, distinguished membership is the Society's highest accolade and recognizes those who have achieved eminence in a branch of engineering. The active roster of distinguished members is comprised of only 193 of the Society's more than 140,000 members worldwide. Levitt -- who is being honored for his achievements in construction engineering and management research, and for his work in developing new theory, methods and tools to design optimal work processes and organizational configurations for highly concurrent facility and product development teams -- will be formally inducted on Thursday, November 6, 2008, at ASCE's Annual Civil Engineering Conference in Pittsburgh.

Levitt currently serves as director of Stanford's Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects (CRGP) and as academic director for the award-winning Stanford Advanced Project Management executive education program. Additionally, he developed the Virtual Design Team (VDT) research group at Stanford, which predicts project cost, schedule and quality for alternative organizational designs with increasing accuracy. VDT was initially validated and calibrated against data from utility repairs by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and North Sea oil platform experiences. In March 1995, the VDT group accurately predicted a four-month delay of Lockheed Martin's LMLV1 -- a prototype launch vehicle adapting missile technology for commercial satellite launch vehicles. In July 1996, Levitt took leave from Stanford to commercialize the results of the VDT research. It has subsequently been used to design organizations that can shrink 'time-to-market' for a variety of complex new products and services.

Currently, Levitt's research group is conducting ethnographic and case study research to understand the behaviors of, and interactions among, participants from different national origins on global infrastructure and industrial projects. Results of these observations are being used to extend VDT so it can help managers design more optimal organization structures for global construction projects and multinational, multi-sectoral post-conflict resolution efforts.

Levitt is a previous recipient of ASCE's Computing in Civil Engineering and Peurifoy Research awards and is an active member of ASCE's Construction Research Council. In addition, he co-founded and served as the initial trustee of the New England Chapter of the Project Management Institute.

Levitt received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Witwatersrand University in South Africa and his master's degree and doctorate in construction engineering and management from Stanford University. He is a resident of Stanford, Calif.

Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) represents more than 140,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society. For more information, visit www.asce.org. ###

Posted by rjorr at June 6, 2008 11:43 AM