Collaborative multidisciplinary learning : quantity surveying students’ perspectives

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of QS programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multi-disciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multi-disciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire which was developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas where a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a project contributor or as a project leader) despite the need for change instigated by the multi-disciplinary (BIM) education revolution. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students’ technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery

Quantity surveying education and the benchmarking of future needs

The education and development needs of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) students has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The dynamic nature of the construction industry coupled with the ever-changing needs of clients has put sustained pressure on the AEC curricula of higher education institutions (HEIs). This is exacerbated by the complexities of modern-day buildings/infrastructures and project teams. The education and development needs of AEC professionals have never been more important. As a vocational subject, the quantity surveying (QS) undergraduate courses delivered in HEIs are designed to prepare students for the world of practice and to deal with emerging challenges (or at least with those intentions). The extent to which graduates from these programmes fulfil this expectation is open to debate and interpretation and continues to generate considerable interest and investigation. The thesis draws upon the wide-ranging perspectives in the field and beyond as the publications were explored from a wider theoretical background and the findings compared with several other important studies.The main finding associated with vocational QS education is that there is general dissatisfaction with graduate attainments due to a tripartite pull on their training needs. As with APC requirements, defining the levels of attainment of each RICS competency and the extent of training required to cope with the critical challenges and emerging roles in a dynamic industry should inform the development of an adaptable curriculum.The principal conclusion relating to education for sustainability is that a lack of definition and common agreement on what sustainable development entails is causing different interpretations by HEIs and hindering the development of a structured QS curriculum. A minimum standard which aligns the views of major stakeholders should produce graduates with the required level of knowledge and skills in sustainability.Regarding BIM education, the critical barriers include the trio of high cost, human factors and inconsistent standards. Despite multi-disciplinary learning, knowledge gaps were found in the collaborative behaviours of QS students. This thesis, thus, concludes that still more needs to be done to move away from the speciality and insularity of the typical BE discipline to the more pluralist and collaborative multi-disciplinary curricula of the future