BOSTON, MA — AECOM announces the appointment of Christopher "Kip" McMahan, AIA, AUA, NCARB, LEED AP, as Campus Planning Leader within the firm’s higher education group within its Buildings + Places (B+P) business in the U.S. East region. In this position, McMahan will bring his experience as both a consultant and university architect to drive the group’s business.

“Kip’s numerous successes as a university architect give him a unique perspective that will help guide our teams to better align our solutions to the owner’s challenges and goals,” said Eric Dinges, Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Principal of AECOM’s Buildings + Places business in its U.S. East and Latin America region. “This, combined with Kip’s 30 years as a consultant architect, will help shape a differentiated approach in partnering with our clients.”

McMahan is an early planning enthusiast and emphasizes the creation of project charters that thoroughly manage scope, budget, and schedule and secure diverse stakeholder approvals and funding. He brings a blended architect and university representative mindset that promotes excellence in capital project master planning, budgeting and programming, as well as administrative leadership on diverse, campus-wide building and facility projects.

“I’m invigorated by my return to consulting and am excited to drive AECOM’s design presence within higher education,” McMahan said. “Understanding institutional and cultural legacy and function is at the heart of higher education design success, and I’m eager to help shape AECOM’s opportunities in this area.”

Prior to joining AECOM, McMahan was a Principal Design Architect for 30 years, directing numerous higher education and commercial real estate projects with architecture firms in Providence, Boston, and New York. He is the former Assistant Vice Chancellor of Campus Planning and Design at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and served as the University Architect. McMahan continues to teach a design studio program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) examining human resiliency, adaptive reuse, and social equity.

McMahan earned a Bachelor of Architecture and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at RISD. He is a recipient of Rhode Island Arts and Business Council Arts Advocate Award, which was accompanied by a U.S. Congressional Citation, an AIA/RI chapter Executive Committee’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Chapter, the Providence Preservation Society’s President’s Award, and an AIA/RI Citation for Contributions to the Advancement of Architecture in the state.