Draft:Don Samarasinghe

Don Amila Sajeevan Samarasinghe is a Sri Lankan academic specializing in Construction, Built Environment, Sustainability and Productivity.

Academic career
Samarasinghe is a Senior Lecturer in Built Environment at Massey University. In 2014 he submitted a doctoral thesis titled Building materials supply chains: an evaluative study of the New Zealand residential construction at Auckland University of Technology. His research interests include construction management, sustainability, and digital technologies.

Samarasinghe has published several papers and book chapters on topics such as construction technology, affordable housing policies, and experiential learning in construction education. He has also conducted research projects on teaching design buildability for construction students and using virtual reality and augmented reality models in infrastructure development. Some of his publications and projects have been funded by external sources, such as the CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building) and the CoRE (Centre of Research Excellence).

Samarasinghe has compared the affordable housing policies of Australia and New Zealand, and identified some of the challenges and opportunities for improving housing affordability in both countries. He has also examined the materials supply chains of residential construction in New Zealand, and proposed some strategies for enhancing sustainable building refurbishment. He has also explored the building materials procurement practices of construction firms, and suggested methods for improving their sustainability performance.

In 2023, Samarasinghe received the CIOB Construction Innovation and Quality Scholarship as recognition and funding for a project titled "Pioneering Sustainable Future in Construction through Raw Earth 3D Printing Training".

Beyond academia, Samarasinghe actively engages with industry practitioners through construction site visits and participation in professional development activities facilitated by organizations such as NZIOB, ENZ, CIOB, PMI, NZGBC, EBANZ, and EBAA.