Iris D. Tommelein is Professor of Engineering and Project Management, in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at U.C. Berkeley. She teaches and conducts research developing the theory and principles of project-based production management for the architecture-engineering-construction industry, what is termed ‘lean construction.’ Current research focuses on the work specialty contractors and suppliers perform and how they can become integral participants in design-build teams in order to increase process and product development performance. Professor Tommelein is an expert on construction site logistics, layout, as well as materials management, supply-chain management, and e-commerce. Her work involves computer-aided design, planning, scheduling, simulation, and visualization of construction processes; and the use of information technology including web-based systems, wireless communication, bar-coding, and laser-based positioning systems.
Professor Tommelein is the Executive Director of the newly formed Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL), a research institute dedicated to developing and deploying knowledge and tools for project management as well as a learning lab for the Northern California construction industry. She is an active participant in the International Group for Lean Construction and she serves on the Board of Directors of the Lean Construction Institute. Professor Tommelein served on the Executive Committee of ASCE’s Technical Council on Computing and Information Technology (TCCIT). She is a member of the Construction Research Council of the Construction Institute of ASCE.
Professor Tommelein is the 2002 recipient of the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Prize “for her research on civil engineering computing for managing project-based production systems in the engineering-architecture-construction industry”.