Our Trustees
EAP’s Board of Trustees strives to ensure that it comprises the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to ensure that the charity is well governed. Individual trustees are appointed in the first instance on the basis of how their individual attributes and competencies add value to the Board. The Board also recognises the importance of diversity and is committed to recruit and retain trustees who reflect and have knowledge of the communities and areas in which the charity operates. The board currently comprises seven members and meets 3 to 4 times a year.
Douglas Oakervee OBE FREng CEng FICE FHKIE
Chairman since July 2004, founder trustee and President 2003-2004 of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), UK.
Douglas joined Charles Brand & Sons Ltd in 1963 and trained under the late James Rennie. In 1975 he joined the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation and in 1982 he established his own consultancy and designed and project managed a variety of works throughout the Far East.
In 1991 he was appointed project director for the planning, design, reclamation, construction and commissioning of the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok. The project was completed in less than eight years, on time and within budget during a period of complex political change.
Since returning to the UK in 1998, Douglas has been responsible for major infrastructure projects including his appointment as Project Director of the civil engineering aspects of the P&O port development at Shellhaven, in the Thames Gateway and more recently, as Executive Chairman of Cross London Rail Links, Europe’s largest construction project.
Douglas was elected to the ICE Council in 1998 and then became Senior Vice-President. He succeeded to the Presidency in November 2003. He is a member of the Executive Board, the Finance Committee, and a member of the International Affairs Policy Committee. He is a member of the Thomas Telford Ltd Board.
Robert Howard-Jones
Founder Trustee.
Robert Howard-Jones was Director of Finance for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers until 2006 when he left to start his own consultancy business. He holds an Honours Degree in Chemistry from Kings College, London and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in 1977. After a period in the firm’s the Hague office he joined Texaco where he became assistant to the Chairman. After spells in the market research, pharmaceutical and the marine safety industry he joined the Institution in 1996.
Tim Sharp
Tim Sharp is the Director of Corporate Communications for Balfour Beatty plc, the international engineering, construction and services group. He has been a Trustee since July 2002.
As Director of Corporate Communications for one of the UK’s leading international engineering groups and having worked in the engineering sector with Balfour Beatty and previously BICC plc, Tim Sharp has nearly 20 years’ experience of international manufacturing, major projects and engineering construction. He has extensive work experience not only in the UK but also in the US, Canada, continental Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and Australasia. He was a senior member of a consulting team responsible for reorganising the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Social Welfare & Social Affairs, on which assignment he spent many months in the Kingdom. Prior to joining BICC in 1984, he was a management consultant, first with the French group, Metra Consulting, and latterly with the US company, William M Mercer, working for international clients on organisation development and communications issues.
Tim is a fellow of the Institute of Public Relations. He is joint author of A Case of Active Social Marketing, Manpower Policy and Individuals – the Management of Change, a comprehensive study of the workings and regulation of the UK, Swedish and German labour markets.
Neil Bruce, CEng MRINA, MBA, FIoD .
Trustee since October 2007.
Neil was appointed an Executive Director of the board of AMEC plc in January 2009. Neil also remains as Chief Operating officer of AMEC’s Natural Resources Division a position he has held since April 2006. Prior to this Neil was Managing Director of AMEC’s Oil & Gas division where he spear-headed the internationalisation of the Oil & Gas group.
Neil is a Chartered Engineer and has a Masters Degree both from Newcastle University and is a fellow of the Institute of Directors and the Energy Institute. With over 25 years experience in the oil and gas industry, and a career which has covered a number of senior management roles in Upstream, Midstream and Downstream sectors, in various regions of the world. Formerly at Atlantic Richfield where Neil held various positions including Head of Greenfield and Brownfield projects.
Neil is a keen supporter of industry development, and is Chairman of the International Oil & Gas Business Advisory Board. During April 2006, Neil completed the three year Chairmanship of the Offshore Contractors Association, and was former member of the Step Change in Safety group, CRINE Industry initiatives and the Northern Offshore Federation.
Neil is a Patron of CLAN (Cancer Link Aberdeen & North-east) charity and a Burgess of Guild of the City of Aberdeen. Neil received in March 2008 the Institute of Directors’ - Director Award for Developing Young People.
Anthony Marshall
Trustee since July 2008. Partner at Lovells LLP.
Tony has wide-ranging contentious and non-contentious construction contract experience, gained on projects in England and Africa and latterly in Hong Kong, where he was based from 1987, heading the firm's regional practice in this field from 1994 to 2002.
He was responsible for drafting contract conditions for use in substantial parts of Hong Kong's new airport project (which involved major reclamation in order to construct most of the airport in the sea, as well as the creation of an entirely new road and rail infrastructure linking the airport with the Central business district on Hong Kong Island). These conditions were tailored to the needs of a massive project which required to be built within budget and to the strictest timescale. He has also worked on the forms of contract for use in projects around the Asian region, and latterly in the UK, involving a range of types of development. These have included: airports, residential and office buildings, hotels, power plants, process plants, railways and light rail systems, reclamation schemes, water treatment plants and waste-to-energy plants.
Tony has also advised on issues arising between the parties in the course of many of these projects, and handled the resolution of disputes where necessary. This has included extensive experience of major arbitration and court proceedings, as well as mediation, adjudication, dispute review boards and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Paul Jowitt BSc (Eng), PhD, ACGI, DIC, CEng, FICE, FRSA, FRSE
Trustee since April 2005. Currently President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Paul is Professor of Civil Engineering Systems and Executive Director of the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology at Heriot Watt University. He is also a Board Member of Scottish Water. He graduated from Imperial College, and was a Lecturer there from 1974 until he moved to Heriot Watt in 1987, becoming Head of Civil Engineering from 1989 to 1999. In 1997 he was an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he still has strong connections with the engineering community. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2005.
Paul’s major interests are sustainable development and systems-level solutions in engineering and the environment, particularly in water resources, asset management and water distribution systems. Paul was Chair of the ICE Presidential Commission – “Engineering without Frontiers” – that examined the engineer’s contribution to meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals. Paul also has a strong interest in the educational and professional formation of the civil engineer, chairing an ICE/JBM Task Group to embed sustainable development into engineering curricula and professional development. He is currently a Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers and serves on its Environment and Sustainability Board.
He is Editor of "Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems", a former Editor of the ICE’s Water, Maritime and Energy Journal and currently a member of the Editorial Panel of the ICE Journal “Engineering Sustainability”. Paul is a trustee of the Forth Bridges Visitor Centre. He is a member of "The Edge" – an ICE/RIBA/CIBSE Ginger Group created to increase public and political awareness of the role of engineers and architects. In 1996 his lecture on water resources - “From the Metamorphosis of Ajax to the Sweet Water of Leith” – featured in the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
In his private life he enjoys old cars and old houses, being the co-owner of one of Edinburgh’s last surviving mews stables properties in the Dean Village. Since 1966 he has been the owner, driver and restorer of a 1937 Morgan Motor Tricycle (a Matchless MX4 990cc V-Twin powered Barrel Back Super Sports). He also enjoys painting and sculpture.
Ron Watermeyer PrEng, CEng, PrCM, PrPCM, FSAICE, FIStructE, FICE
Trustee since 2005. Ron Watermeyer is a director of Soderlund and Schutte, consulting engineers, Johannesburg.
Ron was Vice President (technical leadership) of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering from 2001 to 2003 and president in 2004. In 2002 he served as a vice president of the Institution of Structural Engineers and is currently a council member of that institution, the Chairperson of Standards South Africa’s Technical Committee for Construction Standards and an associate of the Construction Industry Development Board. He has in the past been the project manager of Soweto’s Contractor Development Programme, a member of the Procurement Forum’s Procurement Task Team and a member of the secretariat of the Interministerial Task Team for Construction Industry Development.
He has published over 70 papers on a wide range of topics including procurement, poverty alleviation, housing, structural masonry, community based construction, employment intensive technologies and methods, contractor development, performance standards, the design of low rise structures on problem soil horizons and in areas underlain by dolomites, and sustainable development. He has led the development in South Africa of several construction procurement standards as well as standards for procurement and employment intensive construction practices. He has actively participated in the development of green and white papers and legislation in both South Africa and Namibia.
Date Published: May 11, 2010
Source: Engineers Against Poverty