Faculty member receives the prestigious Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers

Ibrahim Abotaleb '12, '15, assistant professor of construction engineering, received the prestigious 2020 Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize for his significant contributions to construction engineering through his paper “First Attempt Toward a Holistic Understanding of the Interdependent Rippled Impacts Associated with Out-of-Sequence Work in Construction Projects: System Dynamics Modeling Approach,” published in the American Society of Civil Engineers' Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. Abotaleb collaborated on the paper with his former PhD advisor and the Hurst/McCarthy Professor at Missouri S&T, Dr. Islam El-adaway, who is also an alumnus of AUC’s construction engineering department in ‘03 (BSc) and ’06 (MSc).

The prize is awarded once a year by the Construction Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the oldest, largest and most prestigious civil engineering society in the United States. The award is given to the authors of the highest quality journal paper after passing through a series of nominations and recommendations by the key academic community of construction engineering and management. 

The awarded paper has presented pioneering endeavors in modeling and understanding the rippled impacts of out-of-sequence construction work through system dynamics modeling; which has not been accomplished before. This will result in faster resolution of claims resulting from out-of-sequence work and minimizing the associated added costs and delays, which could save millions of dollars of unnecessary costs annually in construction projects.