Khaled Awad, is the Chairman and Founder of ACTS, a material testing and geotechnical consulting firm based in Beirut, Lebanon, and operating in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, India, Rwanda, Kenya and several other countries of the Middle East and Africa. Awad is the past president of the American Concrete Institute (ACI), making him the first and only non-American to assume this post since the establishment of ACI in 1904. He is still an active member of ACI, serving on Certification Programs Committee, ACI Sustainability Committee and the International Certification Subcommittee, of which he is a past chair, and has been recently reappointed as a Trustee of the ACI Foundation. He received the ACI Henry L. Kennedy Award in 2007 and has been elected in 2025 as an Honorary Member of ACI.

Awad worked in the real estate and construction industry in the Arabian Gulf for more than 35 years. He currently sits on the board of several firms in the United states and the Middle East. He was the Founder and CEO of various companies, dealing with the supply chain and information technology side of the industry, as well as the development of large-scale projects.

Awad was the Founding Director of Property Development at the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi. Masdar is a multi-faceted initiative advancing the development, commercialization and deployment of renewable and alternative energy technologies and solutions. He oversaw the development of emission free Masdar City, the world’s first development aiming to become carbon–neutral.

He received his BE in civil engineering from the American University, Beirut, Lebanon, and his MA in business administration from the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon. Awad is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and ASTM International, and a Fellow of the UK Institute of Concrete Technology