Researching David Orr

David Orr graduated from Queen's University Belfast in 1974 with an honours degree in civil engineering, and was awarded an MSc by Queens in 1978. He spent much of his career with Roads Service, Northern Ireland’s road authority, latterly serving as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Regional Development.

He currently chairs the Independent Assurance Panel (Procurement) for High Speed 2, is an external member of the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme Board, and also chairs the Institution of Civil Engineers Benevolent Fund. From 2008 to 2014 he chaired the Procurement Expert Panel for London's Crossrail.

In his Presidential Address, Orr encouraged civil engineers to:* stand up for civil engineering - delivering public works of real value;* stand up for professionalism - there to protect the public;* stand up for excellence in procurement - the key to project success; and* stand up for civil engineers - unsung heroes no more.

He listed as one of his unsung heroes William Bald, who between 1832 and 1842 constructed the Antrim Coast Road.

Orr grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. He earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Princeton University in 1996, and subsequently a law degree from Yale Law School. While still a law student, Orr published a review in Poetry Magazine. While practicing law, Orr has written reviews and essays for Poetry Magazine, The New York Times, and other periodicals. Orr was awarded the 2004 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing of the National Book Critics Circle. In 2005 he became a columnist for the New York Times Sunday Review of Books, where his On Poetry column appears occasionally. He was the Hodder Fellow at Princeton University in 2006-2007.

Several of Orr's poems have been published in Poetry Magazine. In 2011 he published Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry, of which Craig Morgan Teicher has written, "David Orr, the New York Times Book Review's poetry columnist as well as a poet, is a guide after my own heart as he seeks not just to initiate the uninitiated in his new book, Beautiful & Pointless, but also to hold a mirror up to the poetry world itself."

==Further reading==* Recommended as exemplary by Edward Champion.* This article was a response to Dana Goodyear's article in The New Yorker about Ruth Lilly's $200 million bequest to the Poetry Foundation. The bequest, the Poetry Foundation's response to it, and the articles by Goodyear and Orr have been controversial.* Example of Orr's occasional column, On Poetry, from The New York Times Sunday Book Review.* Television program featuring Sam Tanenhaus (editor of the New York Times Book Review) as guest host, Alice Quinn (editor of Elizabeth Bishop's unpublished poetry), and Orr in a discussion of Bishop's poetry and life.