Dr. Marzia Bolpagni receives the Young Engineer Award and the Sir George Macfarlane medal

Photo credit: Mace

BSSC Honorary Lecturer, Dr. Marzia Bolpagni has received the distinguished Young Engineer Award and the Sir George Macfarlane medal recently. This award is made in memory of Sir George Macfarlane FREng, one of the founding Fellows of the Academy, and is presented to Marzia as the overall winner of the RAEng Engineers Trust Young Engineer of the Year. The award recognises the potential of engineers working in the UK who have demonstrated excellence in the early stage of their career.

Dr Marzia Bolpagni is Head of Building Information Modelling International at Mace. As part of her work, Marzia is responsible to set and manage construction strategies for international clients, to allow them to implement the digital representations of their projects. Her construction clients have included UK Government Departments and Birmingham Airport.

During her PhD, Marzia published a paper that challenged the current way of defining the information requirements regarding BIM. She evaluated the current confusions and used this critical thinking to demonstrate how it could be improved. This work received incredible success in 2016, and despite being a PhD Student, Marzia was invited to discuss this further at several conferences and industry groups. She strives to motivate young researchers to break down silos within academia and share their work with industry as it can have a great impact.

Marzia commented: “I am extremely honoured to receive these awards. It is an achievement for the entire Digital Engineering community that has been recognised as a game changer among different engineering disciplines across all sectors. Our role is key to pursue a sustainable world and transform the industries and organisations we work in. I am determined to continue working with talented industry and academic experts to enhance the impact of our sector.”

Dr. Marzia Bolpagni

Marzia works as Head of BIM International at Mace where she develops and implements digital construction solutions for public and private international clients in five international hubs. She holds a PhD in ICT and Smart Construction and she is passionate in filling the gap between industry and academia.

She is glad to be a member of the BIMExcellence Initiative, Assistant Editor of the BIM Dictionary where she coordinates more than 120 volunteers worldwide, Ambassador of the UK BIMAlliance and Expert at the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) TC 442 where she chairs a Task Group on information requirements standardisation (Level of Information Need).

Marzia is lead author of the Level of Information Need standard EN 17412-1, Chair of EC3 Modelling and Standards Committee and Honorary Lecturer at UCL The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction. She is also founder of Italians in Digital Transformation UK. She enjoys sharing her knowledge with students and is often invited as keynote speaker at academic and industrial events. She received several awards for her activities including ‘Woman Ingenious’ in 2017, Star Award for Innovation and Service Excellence by Mace in 2019 and Young Engineer of the Year and Sir George Macfarlane Medal by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2021.