Raymond Levitt

Dr. Levitt served on the faculty of the Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Stanford from 1980 until his retirement in 2017. Before that, he served on the faculty of MIT's Civil Engineering Dept. from 1975-1980.

Projects to develop and operate civil infrastructure increasingly involve private, public and NGO participants from multiple countries, resulting in clashes between participants' values, cultural norms and laws that can create high institutional costs, and attendant delays. Dr. Levitt's past research, conducted through the Global Projects Center (GPC), which he founded and directs, was aimed at developing new financing, governance and organizational approaches to enhance the long-term financial, environmental and social sustainability of these critically needed, but institutionally challenging, projects. His research program developed theory, methods, and tools to design organization structures and governance regimes for project and matrix organization structures in construction and other project-based industries.He retired from Stanford in July 2017, and has been recalled part time to continue teaching his class on "Venture Creation for the Real Economy". In recognition of this work, he was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger as a Commissioner of the California Public Infrastructure Advisory Commission (PIAC) in 2008 and served as a Commissioner of PIAC from 2008-2013.

Levitt founded and served as Academic Director of the Stanford Advanced Project Management (SAPM) executive education certificate program. SAPM awarded more than 9,000 certificates to mid-career professionals in a wide variety of industry sectors from its inception in 1999 until 2018.

He was elected a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Member of the National Academy of Construction..

After retiring from Stanford, Dr. Levitt joined Blackhorn Ventures as an Operating Partner. He currently leads Blackhorn's investments in startups whose solutions aim to increase resource efficiency dramatically in all phases of the development of buildings and infrastructure.

Honors & Awards

• Elected Member, National Academy of Construction (2017)
• Honorary Doctor of Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, FInland (2016)
• Pathfinder Award, Engineering Project Organization Society (2010)
• Elected Distinguished Member, American Society of Civil Engineers (2008)
• Peurifoy Construction Research Award, American Society of Civil Engineers (2006)
• Dean's Award for Industry Education Innovation, School of Engineering, Stanford University (2002)
• Computing in Civil Engineering Award, American Society of Civil Engineers (2000)
• Commitment to Life Award, National Safe Workplace Institute (1987)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

• Distinguished Member, American Society of Civil Engineers (2010 - Present)
• Chair, Engineering Project Organizations Society (2012 - Present)

Professional Education

• PhD, Stanford University, Civil and Environmental Engineering (1975)
• MS, Stanford University, Civil and Environmental Engineering (1973)
• B.Sc. Cum Laude, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Civil and Environmental Engineering (1971)

Publications

• Bourdon, Clinton C., and Raymond E. Levitt, Union and Open Shop Construction: Compensation, Work Practices, and Labor Markets, Lexington Books, D. C. Heath and Co., Lexington, MA, 1980.
  
• Levitt, Raymond E., and Nancy M. Samelson, Construction Safety Management, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1987.
• Dym, Clive, and Levitt, Raymond E., Knowledge-based Systems in Engineering, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1991
• Levitt, Raymond E., and Nancy M. Samelson, Construction Safety Management, 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons, 1993.
• Malek, William, Raymond E. Levitt and Mark Morgan, Executing Your Strategy: How to Break it Down and Get it
  Done, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 2008.
• Scott, W. Richard, Raymond E. Levitt and Ryan J. Orr, eds. (2011). Global Projects: Institutional and Political
  Challenges . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.