Baker Institute’s Jaffe becomes co-chair of forum

Baker Institute’s Jaffe becomes co-chair of forum

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

As the new university co-chair of the Rice Global Engineering & Construction (E&C) Forum, Amy Myers Jaffe plans to promote greater interaction among professionals in the engineering and construction businesses and Rice faculty from a variety of disciplines.

Amy Jaffe

“We would like to see the E&C community be more involved at the university and gain more extensively from Rice research,” said Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and associate director of the Rice Energy Program.

To achieve this goal, Jaffe has invited several Rice scholars to speak at the monthly roundtable meetings of the E&C Forum, an organization focused solely on the discussion and study of problems and opportunities facing the contracting side of the E&C industry. For example, Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology, recently led a discussion on workforce trends in Houston, and Ramon Gonzalez, the William Akers Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been invited to speak on the future of biofuels.

E&C Forum founder Ahmad Durrani, professor of civil and environmental engineering, said the organization approached Jaffe to join the group to build more bridges to other divisions at Rice beyond engineering. “The challenges facing the E&C industry are becoming increasingly more complex,” Duranni said. “Political risk looms large, for example.”

Jaffe and Durrani are heavily involved with preparations for the E&C Forum’s annual conference, which will be held Oct. 17 at the Baker Institute. This year’s theme is “Strategies for a Turbulent, Resource-Constrained World: Delivering on Tomorrow’s Contracts.”

“This year’s conference will investigate what the constraints on resources — both underlying energy resources of oil and gas and the manpower shortages in the industry — mean for the E&C business,” Jaffe said.

Among the questions that will be addressed at the meeting are:

• How do owners and E&C contractors best collaborate to reduce the operational risks in geopolitically difficult or politically unstable environments?

• Are outsourced foreign labor and multiple project offices the best way to meet owners’ needs for reduced costs and limited delays?

• What are the big growth areas for energy industry infrastructure construction?

• What are the biggest political and/or environmental challenges to operating in these growth markets?

• How can the industry best develop increased human resources for the energy industry?

Jaffe noted that keynote speaker for the conference will be Edward Djerejian, director of the Baker Institute.

For more information about the Rice Global E&C Forum and its annual conference, visit <www.forum.rice.edu/index.htm>.