Dr. Arjan Hijdra – scholar, director
Arjan has over 20 years of experience in infrastructure development. He studied civil engineering at the Delft University of Technology and conducted his PhD research in Infrastructure Planning at the University of Groningen. Part of his research was carried out at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Spin-offs of his work are being implemented in the EU ‘Smart Governance of Infrastructure networks’ initiative where he leads the working group assigned to develop a Pan-European framework for infrastructure development. Arjan currently works as a senior advisor at the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management, specializing in the optimization of the general quality of infrastructure networks. He is also a member of the advisory council to the World Economic Forum – Future of Construction Initiative.
Dr. Peter Kamminga – scholar, director
As a trained lawyer, Peter advises large infrastructure developers on procurement and contract strategy. For the last 15 years, he has combined his work as legal academic with assisting public and private parties in selecting procurement methods, and developing contract strategies that best facilitate optimal project results for their multi-million dollar projects. He specializes in road and railroad projects. Today, he assists public and private parties in negotiating and optimally structuring their contractual relations, in mediating complex disputes, and in training professionals and students in the US, Europe and other parts of the world. He has legal degrees from leading European and US universities and holds a Ph.D. His current academic work focuses on contractual and relational governance, contract behavior, and effective procurement of private and public projects and he teaches courses on these topics at VU Amsterdam and Harvard.
Jan van Schoonhoven – senior fellow
Jan is a leading expert in infrastructure finance. He is the executive program leader of the International PPP Centre of Excellence. This center is part of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in Geneva, Switzerland. Currently he is also the counsellor for Infrastructure and PPP projects for the Netherlands Mission in Geneva. Previously Jan was the Director of the PPP unit, Ministry of Infrastructure in the Netherlands. His experience includes the international coordination and development of infrastructure projects of all kinds including port, road, rail and airport developments. Along with this background comes his broad international network, his energetic personality and a personal mission to help communities worldwide to improve their infrastructure.
Dr. Geert Roovers – scholar
Geert has more than 20 years of experience on management and governance of infrastructural and spatial issues. As a consultant at Antea Group Geert for example worked on cooperation on seaborn transport at the Scheldt estuary, a framework for strategic long term replacement of infrastructure at rivers and canals in the Netherlands and at several spatial programs on rivers and coast. Geert holds a Msc. in Civil Engineering from Delft University, and got a Ph.D. at Public Administration at the same university. His thesis dealt with the interaction between system-approaches and decision-making by actors. Geert focuses his consultancy and research on the interaction between complexity and decision-making. Geert is part-time professor at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Deventer, the Netherlands.
David Baxter – senior fellow
David was born in Cape Town, South Africa and lived and worked across Africa. He has more than 20 years of international experience in the areas of alternative financing of infrastructure projects (public-private partnerships), concession planning, socio-economic analysis, stakeholder involvement, and environmental compliance in the infrastructure sector. He is a fully trained educator and socio-economist and has worked at a number of educational and research institutions. David is an internationally recognized PPP thought leader. Currently, he is the Director of the Institute for Public Private Partnerships (IP3) and he is an active collaborator with UNECE’s International PPP Center of Excellence (ICoW) located in Geneva Switzerland. David is a member of two of UNECE’s PPP committees where he serves as a technical advisor on water and renewable sector PPP best practices committees. David is also an advisor to the World Bank’s Bok PPP Certification Program team.
Dr. Mónica A. Altamirano – Scholar
Mónica A. Altamirano is Public Private Partnerships and Procurement specialist at Deltares.
She holds a PhD and an MSc in Systems Engineering and Policy Analysis from Delft
University of Technology. During her PhD researched titled: Innovative contracting
practices in the road sector: Cross-national lessons in dealing with opportunistic
behavior. Additionally she researched the impact of alternative contract incentives on the performance delivered by contractors by developing a simulation game titled Road Roles. Besides her formation in Economics of Infrastructures, New Institutional Economics and Transaction Cost Theory during her master and PhD, she has received specialized training between others in Economic De- and re-regulation of the network industries from the Université Paris I Sorbonne, Econometrics from the Tinbergen Institute, and on Advanced Project Finance and Financial Modelling from Euromoney and F1F9.Since 2010 she joined Deltares and has promoted and carried out a number studies to translate the lessons learned on PPP and private financing in the road sector to the water management sector.
Dr. Harvey Hill – Scholar
Growing up in rural western Canada one could not be unaware of infrastructure as the economy was completely dependent on railways to access export markets. Harvey started his career living and working in Zambia and São Paulo experiencing the both the rural and urban aspects infrastructure. Later on Harvey became particularly interested in country’s infrastructure systems vulnerability hazards helping decision-makers proactively invest in macro-economic and regional resilience. After his Ph.D. he worked as the program manager of the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) Program. From 2004 to 2014 Harvey created and managed a small climate decision support unit in Canada’s National Agriculture Department. There he developed with a team the Landscape and Infrastructure Resilience Assessment framework (LIRA). It is now being applied commercially and has been identified as one of six frameworks relevant to Public Service Canada’s National Disaster risk reduction Program. His current work, as an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Policy Fellow, covers a variety of infrastructure issues such as the economics of the Northwest Passage and possible inland navigable water implications for North American and international supply chains.
Dr Paolo Craviolatti – senior fellow
Dr. Paolo Craviolatti is an economist specialised in the economics of infrastructure development, infrastructure financing and transport corridors development. He has more than 20 years working experience in the field of economics applied to developing country settings. He has worked in 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Central, South and in South East Asia. Paolo is now a Director of MC3 Solutions Ltd, a firm focusing on infrastructure financing and extractives industry development. Previously he was an Economic Adviser at UK Department of International Development where he designed programmes, manage the implementation, and structured deals in infrastructure development in Southern Africa. Prior to joining DFID he was Director of a consulting company in Johannesburg specialising in development economics. I held also positions at other consulting companies as a senior economist. Paolo holds a PhD in Economics from Sussex University (UK), a MSc in Development Economics from Oxford (UK) and a BSc from Reading University (UK).
Suhrita Sen – senior fellow
With more than twenty five years as a management consulting executive, Suhrita is a successful leader, strategic advisor, entrepreneur, and a globally recognized industry expert, serving the infrastructure and real estate industries. She is engaged in advising governments and businesses in all stages of infrastructure project development, finance and management. Working nationally and internationally, she has advised a broad range of projects on the intersection of technical, financial and commercial matters. Suhrita focuses on the broad and unique multidisciplinary needs of public private partnerships (P3s). Suhrita is an Expert Risk Advisor to the North American Development Bank and an Expert P3 Advisor with the US Department of Treasury’s Government Debt and Infrastructure Finance program. As a published author and presenter with a strong industry presence, she has received recognition as a subject matter expert globally. As an adjunct professor at Columbia University & CUNY, she has taught graduate courses in infrastructure and real estate. Suhrita is also an alumnus of Columbia University, and a PMP.
Tjeerd Burger – Young Professional
Tjeerd is a young professional in the field of infrastructure. At the University of Groningen he completed the Msc Environmental Infrastructure Planning (cum laude), writing his thesis at Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment). Tjeerd is currently working as a trainee at ProRail, the Dutch railways operator. This enables him to have an inside view of the Dutch railway network. In Tjeerd’s opinion railway infrastructure is really intriguing, being so similar and also so different to other types of infrastructure. Railways rock!
More fellows coming soon…
