An industry innovator and leader with nearly 40 years of experience has joined the College of Technology as a Professor of Practice in Construction Management. Recently retired from ExxonMobil’s Global Projects Company as Chief Project Management Engineer, Tony Bazzini joined the University of Houston’s College of Technology effective September 2021.
As Chief Project Management Engineer, Tony was involved with many of ExxonMobil’s most complex technical and organizational issues impacting the Company’s capital project portfolio. In his position as Chief Engineer he also provided guidance to the Company’s senior management on project related issues, helping guide decision making on some of the world’s largest capital project ventures.
Prior to his role as Chief Engineer, Tony led the project management function for ExxonMobil’s refining and chemicals large project (>$100M) portfolio for nearly 10 years, guiding development of execution and contracting strategies, cost & schedule estimates and staffing decisions for project teams in multiple domestic and international locations. Tony also played a key role in developing career development plans and tools for ExxonMobil’s project practitioners enabling them to achieve their aspirations as a project professional. Prior to this role, Tony had multiple assignments in ExxonMobil’s engineering and business organizations as well having assignments in overseas locations.
In addition to his ExxonMobil experiences, Tony was also very active in industry improvement advocation efforts, including serving as 2020 Chair of the ECC Association, one of the industry’s largest and oldest associations dedicated to improving capital project performance. Additionally, Tony led ExxonMobil’s early engagement with the Construction Industry Institute’s Operating System 2.0 effort (i.e., “OS2”) leading industry efforts to develop foundational research aimed at improving how project risks are characterized, quantified and mitigated to ensure successful project outcomes.
In joining the College of Technology, Tony hopes to provide its construction management students with both context and perspective informed by his nearly 40 years of industry experience. In addition to supplementing the existing curriculum focused on key enabling skills and technologies for successful construction management professionals, Tony hopes to also supplement this content with examples of how these courses are applied in practice and the implications of how project teams / owner / contractor dynamics impact project success during their application. Tony will be involved in several construction management major courses, such as project control, estimating, and effective communication in CM.
UH Construction Management (CM) has a simple vision to be the industry’s university programTM, preparing industry-ready graduates and conducting applied research and innovation. Achieving these goals requires engagement of both university professors, who have expertise in curriculum and theory, and industry practitioners, who can provide context on how the curriculum is applied in practice. Through its Industry-Academia Exchange program, UH CM is enhancing full-time university professors’ industry experience through faculty residency, while involving industry experts like Tony as an Industry Professor in delivering the course curriculum. The strong partnership with the construction industry has fueled the growth of UH CM into one of the largest construction education programs in the country with 800 students.