Director of Project Management for The University of Adelaide, offering masters degrees in traditional and complex project management. He initiated the MPM and the Master of Applied Project Management in Defence, Management of Climate Change and Mining. His research focus is on the project Management of System of Systems, especially requirements, architecture and choice of a project delivery system. Application of these include roll-out of government programs, ICT, defence, climate change, transport, power delivery, infrastructure, projects developed by the World Bank and the United Nations, and others. System-of-systems include the recognition and integration of political, legal, financial and government provision and control, as well as the technology, including ICT. He has been awarded the Engineer’s Australia Medal, the Rotary International Gold Medal for contributions to vocational education and the Magnolia Silver Medal from the Shanghai Government for contributions to Chinese overseas relations. He has spent almost equal time in academia and industry interspersing these roles. Previously he has been Corporate Development Director of Fletcher Challenge Construction, responsible for people and business systems improvement in the USA, NZ, Australia, Pacific and Asian businesses, in the $2 billion pa company; in academe he was the foundation Dean of Design, Architecture and Building at The University of Technology, Sydney. He is a Past-President of the Sydney Division of the Engineers, Australia (2004) and is currently Deputy Chair of Engineers Australia’s national Centre of Leadership and Management. He is currently a member of Engineers Australia’s national Congress, which advises the Council on policy. Vernon has conducted many benchmarking studies in the past. As an academic he conducted four sets of international benchmarking studies, comparing Australia’s project management performance with that of the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand, including the study for the 1991 Royal Commission in New South Wales.