Biography

Omar Swei joined the Department of Civil Engineering at UBC as an Assistant Professor in 2018. He received his graduate training at MIT in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems Division and was a recipient of a U.S. Fulbright grant for the 2016-2017 academic year. His research broadly centers on the development and implementation of operations research methods to improve the design and maintenance of infrastructure systems. This work emphasizes the development of optimal infrastructure management policies under uncertainty and improving the economic performance and environmental sustainability of existing infrastructure assets. Dr. Swei is also an instructor in the UBC Master of Engineering Leadership in Integrated Water Management.

Research Interests

Asset Management, Life Cycle Modeling, Optimization Methods, Real Options, Reinforcement Learning, Risk Analysis, Sequential Decision-Making, Stochastic Modeling, Sustainable Infrastructure Management, Time-Series Methods, Uncertainty Estimation and Propagation.

Courses

CIVL 300 Construction Engineering and Management

CIVL 519 Risk and Decision Analysis for Infrastructure Management

CIVL 522 Project and Construction Economics

Awards & Recognitions

• 2020, Best Poster Award, Second Place, TRB Standing Committee on Construction Management, 99th Annual Transportation Research Board Meeting
• 2015, Best Paper, ASCE Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering

Publications

• O. Swei, “Forecasting Infidelity: Why Current Methods for Predicting Costs Miss the Mark”, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, vol. 146, no. 2, p. 04019100, 2020.
• A. Yehia and Swei, O., “Probabilistic infrastructure performance models: An iterative-methods approach”, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, vol. 111, pp. 245 – 254, 2020.
• X. Xu, Swei, O., Xu, L., C. Schlosser, A., Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Quantifying Location-Specific Impacts of Pavement Albedo on Radiative Forcing Using an Analytical ApproachQuantifying Location-Specific Impacts of Pavement Albedo on Radiative Forcing Using an Analytical Approach”, Environmental Science & Technology, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 2411 – 2421, 2020.
• O. Swei, Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Embedding Flexibility within Pavement Management: a Technique to Improve Expected Performance of Roadway Systems”, ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 2019.
• C. Caldeira, Swei, O., Freire, F., Dias, L., Olivetti, E. A., and Kirchain, R., “Planning strategies to address operational and price uncertainty in biodiesal production”, Applied Energy, vol. 238, pp. 1573-1581, 2019.
• O. Swei, Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Does pavement degradation follow a random walk with drift? Evidence from variance ratio tests for pavement roughness”, ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, vol. 24, no. 4, 2018.
• O. Swei, ““Long-Run Construction Cost Trends: Baumol’s Cost Disease and a Disaggregate Look at Building Material Price Dynamics”, ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, vol. 144, no. 7, 2018.
• O. Swei, Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Construction Cost Estimation – a Parametric Approach for Better Estimates of Expected Cost and Variation”, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, vol. 101, pp. 295-305, 2017.
• M. Akbarian, Swei, O., Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Probabilistic Characterization of Life Cycle Agency and User Costs: A Case Study of Minnesota”, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, vol. 2639, pp. 93-101, 2017.
• O. Swei, Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “A Probabilistic Approach for Long-run Price Projections: Case Study of Concrete and Asphalt”, 143, vol. 1, 2016.
• O. Swei, Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Probabilistic Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Pavements: Drivers of Variation and Implications of Context”, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, vol. 2523, pp. 47-55, 2015.
• O. Swei, Gregory, J., and Kirchain, R., “Probabilistic Characterization of Uncertain Inputs in the Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Pavements”, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, vol. 2366, pp. 71-77, 2013.