[1] Turner started his academic career as IBM Post-doctoral Research Fellow in 1977 at Oxford University in its Department of Engineering Science and at Brasenose College.
[1] There for three years he worked in the areas of shipbuilding, manufacturing, telecommunications, computing, finance, and government.
[2] In 1989 he moved back to the academic world to the Henley Business School at the University of Reading as Director of Project Management, appointed Professor in 1994.
In 1997 he moved to the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he served as Professor of Project Management until 2005.
In those days he was also Operations Director in the process plant industry at the European Construction Institute.