Paul Jowitt


Professor Paul William Jowitt is a British civil engineer, Professor of Civil Engineering Systems at Heriot Watt University, and executive director of the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology. On 3 November 2009, he became the 145th President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to technology. He is currently President of the Commonwealth Engineers Council. He was elected in 2012 as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Jowitt graduated from Imperial College in 1972, and lectured there from 1974 before moving to Heriot-Watt University in 1987 where he was head of civil and offshore engineering from 1989 to 1999. In 1997 he was an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2005.
He was the lead investigator in a Heriot-Watt/Cambridge University consortium on the EPSRC-funded Implementation Strategies for Sustainable Urban Environment Systems project, intended to facilitate knowledge transfer for EPSRC’s Sustainable Urban Environments Programme. Previously he led a number of research projects from EPSRC, UKWIR and the UK Water Utilities on water distribution network reliability, drought management and sustainable wastewater treatment.
His published work includes journal articles in Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Engineering Sustainability, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, ASCE, Engineering Optimization. and Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems.
Jowitt is chair of the engineering charity 'Engineers Against Poverty'. He is a former trustee of the Forth Bridges Visitor Centre, and a trustee of The Steamship Sir Walter Scott Trust.