Lisburn man gets OBE

Mr Woodside who is a serving member of the Board of Governors for both Pond Park Primary and Friends began his civil engineering training with Larne Borough Council in 1965 progressing in 1970 to Assistant Engineer. From 1972 - 1973 he was employed by the Joint Engineering Department for Ballymena Borough and Rural District Councils under the leadership of P.H. Flood. He was Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the N.I. Polytechnic and then Senior Lecturer to Principal Lecturer by 1982 teaching at sub-degree, degree and postgraduate level on many courses.

He was then appointed Senior Lecturer at the University of Ulster and progressed to Reader in Highway Engineering in 1990.

In recognition of his outstanding work in his subject (as Consultant, Academic and Researcher) he was awarded a personal chair in Highway Engineering in June 1994 and Director of the Highway Engineering Research Centre in the School of the Built Environment.

Recently he has retired from his post as Director of the Transport and Road Assessment Centre (TRAC) within the School of the Built Environment. This area of research within the Faculty of Art Design and the Built Environment provided a specialist research and development service to the profession throughout the world for over 30 years.

He secured funding for his research from many sources including Research Councils, World Bank, IDB/LEDU, Government Departments, and Industry both home and abroad. Total funding now exceeds several millions of pounds.

He has supervised 53 PhDs and 5 MPhil students and is currently supervising 4 full-time PhD students and 3 part-time students, in his role as Emeritus Professor of Highway Engineering at The University of Ulster.

He has served as external examiner for 44 Higher Degrees (PhD and MPhil) at various U.K. Universities – Abertay, Birmingham, Dundee, Heriot Watt, Liverpool, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Leeds, Hertfordshire and Sheffield Hallam, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, Liverpool John Moore’s University, Southampton, Glamorgan, South Bank and the University of Bucharest. Currently he is External Examiner for Universities of Newcastle, Leeds and Brunel.

His main areas of research interest are in Highway materials, recycling, skid-resistance and Road Safety. He has contributed to a number of text-books and authored more than 200 technical papers presenting them at many leading international and world conferences in USA, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Iceland, France, Germany, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Belgium and throughout the UK and Ireland. Alan has lectured to many branches of the major Professional Institutions i.e. ICE, CIHT, IAT, IOQ, throughout the British Isles.

He is a past Chairman of The NI Branch of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation and a member of the Joint Board of Moderators for Civil Engineering degrees and a Freeman of the City of London.

He Chairs WISH Forum for Northern Ireland and for a number of years has been very active in promoting STEM in schools.

He also served on the Board of Governors of Logos School of English Education in Cyprus and is also a Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Malaysia.