The IET Annual Dinner 2011

The guest speaker for The Institution of Engineering and Technology Annual Dinner 2011 is John Armitt, CBE FREng FICE, Chairman, Olympic Delivery Authority

John Armitt was appointed Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority on 1 September 2007. John was previously Chief Executive of Network Rail from October 2002 and Chief Executive of Railtrack plc from December 2001. He has extensive experience in the building, civil engineering and industrial construction markets.

John is a civil engineer and joined John Laing in 1966 as a graduate engineer. During the next 27 years he worked on major construction projects in the UK and overseas, spending the last seven as Chairman of Laing's International and Civil Engineering Divisions. From 1993 to 1997 he was Chief Executive of Union Railways, the company responsible for development of the high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link, due to fully open in November 2007. In 1997 he went back to construction as Chief Executive of Costain, a position he held until 2001 when he joined Railtrack just after it had been put into administration.

Mr Armitt is also Chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and is a Non-Executive Director of the Berkeley Group.

He was awarded the CBE in 1996 for his contribution to the rail industry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 2008 Mr Armitt received honorary doctorates from the universities of Portsmouth, Birmingham and Reading.