M. G. Lay

MAX LAY

Doctor & Professor

FTSE, HonFIEAust, LifeMASCE, Ret’dMCIArb, DEng, PhD, MEngSci, BCE, CPEng

Maxwell Gordon Lay (AM) is an internationally recognised expert in the road and transport engineering and in the history of engineering, and information technology. He was educated at Melbourne and Lehigh Universities where his PhD supervisor was Professor Ted Galambos. He has held senior appointments at the (then) State Electricity Commission of Victoria, BHP Engineering, the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) as Executive Director, VicRoads as Director of Major Projects, consulting group SKM as a principal and various private consultancies. He was Independent Reviewer for the Melbourne City Link Project, and then worked for the Thiess/Macquarie on their bid for EastLink. When the bid was won, he was made a Director of the new company, ConnectEast, formed to operate the concession and remained a Director until the company was sold in late 2010. He has been an Advisor to Roads Australia on road pricing.

In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary Medal by the Prime Minister of Australia. In 2006 he was awarded an Order of Australia for “service to engineering, particularly through leadership in the delivery of quality road infrastructure and the development of new contract management processes, and as an educator and historian.”

Dr Lay has degrees of BCE, MEngSci and PhD. In 2005 he was made a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa), by RMIT University. The citation includes “Dr Max Lay is one of the most influential civil engineers in this country.”

He was a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne from 2000 to 2010?. He has also been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a Rees Jeffreys Fellow in the UK. He has been an Adjunct Professor at RMIT since 2012.

Engineers Australia (EA) awarded him the Warren Medal for Achievement in Civil Engineering, and, in 1995, its Transport Medal. He was also the recipient of the Moisseif Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 1999 the EA Victoria Division named him Professional Engineer of the year and in 2002 made him an Honorary Fellow. In 2006 he was given the Award of Merit for engineering heritage, by EA. In 2009 he was awarded the John Shaw Gold Medal of Roads Australia in recognition of outstanding service to road transport in Australia. In 2010 the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV) entered his name in its Golden Book "dedicated to those individuals who have rendered distinguished services in the interests of motoring". In 2014 he was awarded the Peter Nicol Russell Medal of Engineers Australia. This is Engineers Australia's most prestigious medal.

He has been a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering since 1985. He was President of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1995 and 1996, as well as being a Councillor from 1978 to 2002. From 1986 to 2008 he was a Director of RACV, and President from 1999 to 2002. He was President of the Australian Automobile Association from 2000 to 2002. In 2010 ITS-Australia gave him it first lifetime achievement award and announced that future awards would be called the “Dr Max Lay Award.” He has a road and a park named after him in Adelaide.

One of his passions is the dissemination of information on roads and transport and, over the years, he has authored the following books on roads: Source Book for Australian Roads, ARRB; Handbook of Road Technology, 4th edition, 2009, London: Spon; History of Australian Roads, ARRB; Ways of the World, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press; Melbourne Miles, a history of metropolitan Melbourne’s streets and roads, Australian Scholarly Publishing; Strange Ways, a book of whimsy about roads, published by EA Books and most recently With Power and Purpose on Kindle. He has authored over 780 publications on a wide range of topics and has an entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica related to roads. In April 2000, ARRB Transport Research named its Library the “M.G. Lay Library” to honour his “passion for the dissemination of high quality professional information.” Dr Lay’s most recent formal papers were on the history and measurement of traffic congestion.

Dr Lay is married with four children, ten grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren.