Denise Bower is an English civil engineer and academic. She is Professor^[1] of Engineering Project Management^[2][3] at the University of Leeds, and an executive director at Mott MacDonald.^[4]

Bower received her Bachelor of Engineering^[5] in civil engineering from the University of Manchester in 1990. In 1995, she earned her Doctor of Philosophy^[5] in project management from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.^[6]

Bower began a research assistant position at UMIST in 1991, and later became a Shell lecturer of project management there.^[5]

She was the director of the Engineering Project Academy at the University of Leeds^[1] in West Yorkshire, England from 2011 until 2016. While still working at the University of Leeds, she began working as executive director of the Major Projects Association.^[7] She worked at MPA until 2020.

In 2016, she became an independent advisor for Mott MacDonald,^[1] and continued in that capacity until 2020 when she became executive director of external engagement.^[8][4]

She has been a professor at the University of Leeds for over 20 years.

• Honorary Fellow of the Association for Project Management^[7] "for her work in collaboration with Infrastructure UK (UK Treasury) to develop an Infrastructure Routemap to enable more informed project and programme initiation and delivery decisions." (2014)^[2]
• Member of UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smart Cities^[2]
• Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers^[7]
• Council Member at the Institution of Civil Engineers^[6]
• Chair of the Capacity Building and Professionalism Panels at the Institution of Civil Engineers^[6]
• Judge for Wolfson Economics Prize (2014)^[6]

• Order of the British Empire "for services to the Engineering and Construction Industries"^[3][2]