Colorado State University Construction Management Professor Recognized for Leadership

On Nov. 8 in New Orleans, La., Carla Lopez del Puerto, an assistant professor in the Department of Construction Management at Colorado State University, will be recognized with the 2012 Full-Time Faculty Distinguished Design-Build Leadership Award from the Design-Build Institute of America, or DBIA.

“It is difficult to imagine a full-time faculty member more deserving of a DBIA Distinguished Design-Build Leadership Award,” said Douglas D. Gransberg, a construction engineering professor at Iowa State, who nominated Lopez del Puerto for this prestigious award.

Lopez del Puerto’s past accomplishments include participation in nine funded research projects that are worth more than $1.5 million, co-authoring a book and coaching the CSU Design-Build competition team on the path to winning the DBIA student competition four years in a row, from 2009-2012.

Lopez del Puerto’s career started 14 years ago in 1998 as an architectural designer in Mexico, where she remains a registered architect. She then received her master’s degree in construction administration from the University of Oklahoma in 2003, becoming the first ever to have done so.

Her master’s thesis “Comparative Analysis of Owner Goals for Design/Build Projects,” was published in the ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering and won the ASCE 2009 Best Peer-Reviewed Paper Award.

She got three years of hands on experience at Benham Companies, an integrated design-build firm, before she started her second career as a professor, first at Southern Illinois University and now here at CSU.

“She prepares her students to use construction management skills in high-pressure environments that emphasize teamwork, problem-solving, time management, and oral and written communication,” Gransberg said in nomination materials.

This year the student team she coaches won the DBIA Rocky Mountain Section student competition once again, earning them the privilege to accompany Lopez del Puerto to the DBIA annual conference in New Orleans, La., for lectures and networking, as well as to see her receive the Full-Time Faculty Distinguished Design-Build Leadership Award for her excellence in the design-build field, research and classroom leadership.

“She is without a doubt a distinguished leader in the newest generation of DB educators and researchers,” Gransberg said in nomination materials.

The Department of Construction Management is in the College of Applied Human Sciences.

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