The Design-Build Institute of America gave Barbara Jackson its highest honor at their conference Nov. 8 in New Orleans. Jackson, director of the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management, was recognized as the Brunelleschi Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
The honor is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to the design and construction industry through outstanding leadership and the advancement of integrated design-build project delivery. Each recipient of this award has demonstrated originality, vision and breadth over the course of their professional life. In addition, each has dedicated 25 years or more of strong and well-documented commitment to design-build project delivery.
“The Brunelleschi is the most meaningful award that I could ever receive,” Jackson said. “The first time I had ever heard about design-build, I was a sophomore in college, and proceeded to build my whole career around this integrated process. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was never going to change the way we do the design and construction business one project at a time. So, some 20-plus years ago, after leaving industry, I set out to influence and inspire the next generation of contractors and designers through education. I’ve pretty much dedicated my professional life to showing people how to do this business a better way through the design-build process.”
Named for Filippo Brunelleschi—the Florentine master builder whose most notable work is the Duomo of the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy—the award is the highest individual honor DBIA bestows.
“As a recognized thought leader in the education of students, industry professionals and university faculty, your leadership has had a widespread, positive impact,” DBIA officials wrote in a letter to Jackson. “Your exuberant passion, the countless hours you have dedicated to preparing the next generation of design-build leaders, and the insight and innovative thinking you have provided to advance design-build and DBIA, make you a natural choice as the 2018 recipient. You embody the qualities that DBIA envisioned when it conceived the Brunelleschi award.”
A highly respected thought leader in the design-build industry, Jackson’s primary focus is on leadership and culture in the transforming design and construction disciplines. She is a leading expert in the area of integrated project delivery, design-build, interdisciplinary collaboration and integrated project leadership. Jackson was named director of Daniels’ Burns School in 2013 after 20 years in industry as a chief estimator, senior project manager and CEO of Design-Build Services Inc.
For 15 years, she also developed design-build and integrated project delivery education at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. At Burns, Jackson has developed an educational model representing the full life-cycle of the built environment, and an advanced master’s degree in integrated project delivery with an emphasis on leadership.