Chris Gauer, MMM Group

Chris Gauer received his B.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1978. He has worked in consulting engineering throughout Canada and internationally. He is currently the Manager Transportation, Project Development and Management Group at MMM. Mr. Gauer is a Professional Engineer practising in transportation registered in a number of Provinces and is an Advance Value Specialist with SAVE International.

Chris led the MMM VE initiatives from 2001 to 2005. Chris has worked in almost every Province of Canada on Transportation projects and he just returned from 5 years working in Western Canada where he has led VE work for contractors and government sector clients across the West. His recent area of work is in the area of Alternative Delivery projects including Owner’s Engineer, Design Build and DBFO projects.

Robert (Bob) D. Nairn, P. Eng. Transportation Director – MMM Group Limited

Bob Nairn is recognized as one of Canada’s leading transportation experts. In his former role as President and CEO of McCormick Rankin Corporation, one of Canada’s largest transportation consulting engineering firms, (now part of the MMM Group), he was responsible for overseeing all municipal, provincial and federal transportation projects.

Over the past 20 years, Bob has directly participated in the pursuit, development, design, management and delivery of some eighteen (18) P3 major transportation projects in Canada and the United States. These projects have included the 407 ETR ‘greenfield’ freeway in Toronto, Ontario; the 200 kilometre Fredericton to Moncton ‘greenfield’ freeway in New Brunswick; the Highway 104 ‘greenfield’ freeway in Nova Scotia; the 275 kilometre Fredericton to the Quebec Border ‘greenfield’ freeway in New Brunswick; the Kicking Horse Canyon highway project in British Columbia; the Anthony Henday Drive ‘greenfield’ freeway in Edmonton, Alberta; the North-East Stoney Trail ‘greenfield’ in Calgary, Alberta; the Golden Ears Bridge Crossing of the Fraser River in Vancouver, British Columbia; the Sea-to-Sky Highway project between Vancouver and Whistler in British Columbia; theA-30 highway project in Montreal, Quebec; the I-595 highway project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; the First Coast Outer Beltway highway project in Jacksonville, Florida and the Mid-Currituck highway project in North Carolina. Bob is currently the project manager for Infrastructure Ontario preparing a report on “Budgeting Capital Costs in the Transit and Highways Sectors Differences between Design-Bid-Build and Alternative Financing and Procurement”. Bob Nairn is currently the Transportation Director for the MMM Group based in Toronto, Ontario as well as a Director of the recently established Lochner MMM Group based in Chicago, Illinois.

Jeff Plant, NCE Value Engineers

Jeffrey Plant is an accomplished Project Manager with over thirty years of transportation, environmental and building project experience for a variety of clients including government ministries, departments and agencies, international financial institutions, design-build contractors, private developers, concessionaires, building owners, facility managers, railways, transit authorities, municipalities, first nations, and industries.

Since 2002 he has acted as the Independent Engineer on the Highway 2000 Project in Jamaica, a PPP concession awarded to Transjamaican Highways Ltd - a joint venture of Bouygues Travaux Publics and Vinci of France. He is currently working as a consultant to Bouygues Civil Works Florida on the Port of Miami Tunnel Project. He has also worked on the Kiev to Odessa (Ukraine)Toll Highway Project with Torno of Italy, privatization of the Indian Turnpike, the proposed Blue-22 airport rail link in Toronto and a highway concession project in Lagos, Nigeria.

Mr. Plant is certified as an Associate Value Specialist by SAVE International - the Value Society and serves as one of two Canadians on the Executive Committee as the VP Finance and Administration. He has participated in value studies on major PPP projects and represents the international contractor's perspective.

Stuart Sokoloff, CTS Group

Stuart Sokoloff is a licensed professional engineer in the US and Ontario with 35 years experience in the design and construction of bridges and highways in the US and Canada. He was previously the VP of Construction and currently the Director of Design Build for SAVE International. He has participated in over 100 formal Value Engineering studies as an expert in geotechnical and foundations engineering, bridge structures, highways and constructability. Construction costs have ranged to $2.5 billion. Project locations include California, Ontario Canada, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington State. Bridge project types include cantilever, cable stay, segmental concrete and suspension bridges. Bridge/Transit VE project examples in Ontario for MTO include the Detroit River Crossing Windsor approach roadway; Rt. 401 Bridge, Cornwall; Queens Highway widening with 5 bridges in Ottawa, and the Ottawa Busway project. Bridge projects in the US include the Brooklyn Bridge and Verrazano Narrows Bridge. He also provides constructability assessments and construction designs to national heavy/bridge contractors including Granite, Kiewit, Perini, Skanska, etc.

Steve Taylor, VP Special Projects Ontario Genivar

Mr. Taylor has a BSc from Queens University and a Masters degree in structural engineering from Carleton University. His career has focused on planning and design of transportation infrastructure including Canadian and international projects. Mr. Taylor is a CVS Life and has been involved in numerous design build and 3P projects where value engineering was used to win the project or provide cost savings to the owner and contracting team.

Dave Wilson, NCE Value Engineers

David Wilson is President of NCE Value Engineers Inc., a value management and facilitation firm, located in Markham, ON, Canada. He is a civil engineer with over 28 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. During his career, Mr. Wilson has led major civil infrastructure projects through the planning, design and/or construction phases. He has been involved in value management projects since 1995 and has completed over 250 studies. He is a member of SAVE International, the Canadian Society of Value Analysis, and the Institute of Value Management. He currently serves as the President of SAVE International.

Mr. Wilson has a Bachelor of Engineering Science (BESc) degree from the University of Western Ontario in London, ON, Canada, and is a licensed Engineer in the Provinces of Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta, and New Brunswick.

Mr. Wilson has extensive experience utilizing VE and risk assessment approaches to support enhanced decisionmaking processes for major alternative delivery infrastructure and building projects. Mr. Wilson is the author of 30 technical papers, including SAVE International’s Paper of the Year Putting the Value Back into Planning, and has authored a value engineering applications document for the National Academy of Sciences.