Starting a Construction Engineering Program at Marquette University

Marquette University decided to start a Construction Engineering and Management program during the 2007 academic year. An endowed chair, titled the McShane Chair in Construction Engineering and Management, was funded by Jim and Kelly McShane to run the program. After a national search, Mark Federle, an executive with a large construction firm and previous academic experience at Iowa State University, was hired to start the program. The first class of students were enrolled in the fall of 2008. This paper will present the opportunities/challenges in starting a Construction Engineering and Management program. Lessons learned, comparisons to other programs, and other pertinent information will be shared. The program will be undergoing an ABET evaluation during the fall of 2012, if successful it will result in Marquette University having one of less than 15 such programs across the country. To this time, there have been twelve graduates from the program

Sustainable Construction Engineering and Management

This Book is a Printed Edition of the Special Issue which covers sustainability as an emerging requirement in the fields of construction management, project management and engineering. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research articles that address the challenges and opportunities for sustainable construction in all its facets, including technical topics and specific operational or procedural solutions, as well as strategic approaches aimed at the project, company or industry level. Central to developments are smart technologies and sophisticated decision-making mechanisms that augment sustainable outcomes. The Special Issue was received with great interest by the research community and attracted a high number of submissions. The selection process sought to balance the inclusion of a broad representative spread of topics against research quality, with editors and reviewers settling on thirty-three articles for publication. The Editors invite all participating researchers and those interested in sustainable construction engineering and management to read the summary of the Special Issue and of course to access the full-text articles provided in the Book for deeper analyses

On Epistemology of Construction Engineering and Management

In philosophy of science, there have been two different starting points for epistemology: Platonism and Aristotelianism. These two alternative starting points have played a major role also in the formation of fundamental ideas of engineering and management generally as well as in relation to construction. It is contended that an overly Platonic influence on engineering and management has created a number of problems. For solving these problems, beyond mere patching, a more balanced take on Platonism and Aristotelianism is needed