Hello.  I’m Derek.  I quantify things that can’t be measured.

I’m an academic serving the construction sector with a particular interest in all things value and all things stakeholder-related.

Once upon a time, I was a Quantity Surveyor but I quickly came to realise that the value of buildings has little to do with what they cost to construct and even less about how much they can be sold for.  It’s much more complicated than that and it can’t be understood unless we first understand the people who are forming the judgement.

I spend my academic time working with industry to get the bottom of value: to understand how we can help project teams understand it and expose fundamental truths about it.  If I’m not teaching value management or value engineering, I’m working on ways to quantify intangible concepts such as value in meaningful ways.  After all, the bean-counters need some beans to count.

This site presents my ongoing thoughts and my formal publications.  Roll your sleeves up and dig on in.  If you’d like to know more about anything you see here, you can find me at drderekthomson@gmail.com.

Cheers!