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 Gavin Ford

Gavin Ford

Research student, Cardiff Business School

Overview

I’ve always been passionate about engineering. From a young age I’ve always been inquisitive as to how things have been constructed. Whether that be a bridge or other infrastructure on our busy transportation network.


 I successfully achieve my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Swansea University consecutively in 2010 and 2011, whereby I got a job with a design company


 Since 2011, I have spent over 8 years delving into various roles within the construction sector. Starting as a graduate designer, then moving my way through the ranks of graduate engineer, sector engineer, senior engineer to quality manager.


 Currently, I am the Quality and Handover Lead for the largest highways project in the UK (£1.4B A14 Highways project in Cambridge).


 My drive and enthusiasm, coupled with the support from my parent company (Costain), has positively encouraged me to pursue my passion of making a difference in the construction world. This has come in the form of cutting-edge PhD research. 

Research

Research interests

My research proposal is heavy based around right first-time culture. We make repetitive mistakes during key construction activities on all projects. My aim is to mitigate the likelihood of future error by way of reverse engineering theory. Focus on what we did wrong and build-in resilience to mitigate the risk of repetition.


As such, the title “Forecasting and Decision Making in Different Operation Environments” has been devised to capture my PhD research.


Making use of large quantities of Non-Conformance data supplied by various projects with Costain, including the A14, my intent is to analyze the data qualitatively against Dr Snowden’s The Cynefin Framework to identify trends in management, supply chain, design etc. With this information, we will be able to pinpoint exactly what domain each non-conformance is by way of route cause and corrective action.