Former RICS NI chair and chartered surveyor Diana Fitzsimons has been recognised with a prestigious lifetime achievement award.

Diana has had a distinguished career across the public, private and voluntary sectors, serving as Chair of the global Planning and Development Faculty Board of RICS and member of RICS World Governing Council, as well as Deputy Chair of RICS Lionheart.

She was presented with the inaugural lifetime achievement award at the RICS UK Awards Grand Final in London on Friday 21 October.

The RICS Awards are a highly prestigious event, presenting accolades to the most impressive building projects and teams in the UK. This is the first year in the longstanding awards history that a lifetime achievement award has been presented.

Judges said that Diana Fitzsimons FRICS was an extremely worthy recipient.

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Currently a Belfast Harbour Commissioner and a Visiting Professor at Ulster University, Diana is immediate past Chair of Radius Housing and has been active throughout her career at an international level. She regularly gives conference papers on her favourite subjects of sustainability, urban regeneration and Belfast Harbour's regeneration activities.

Diana worked in private practice for many years as a planning consultant leading the Belfast office of Turley, then her own practice, and before that was a principal Planning Appeals Commissioner for a decade. Before that she was a Senior Lecturer in Planning and Development at Ulster University, involved in course development, teaching and research in her field of urban regeneration.

Diana's Lifetime Achievement Award came at an event where Northern Ireland projects and professionals swept the board. The Erne Campus of South West College was named Public Sector Project of the Year as well as overall Project of the Year. An Chroí Community Hub in the North West was highly commended in the Community Benefit Project category, whilst the project team delivering the North West Multi Modal Transport Hub won Infrastructure Team of the Year.

Commenting on the award, Diana Fitzsimons said: "I was extremely honoured to be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by RICS. This is effectively an award presented by my peers and for the judges to feel that I was worthy of the award is very humbling."