ARCOM Doctoral Workshop on Construction Education in the New Digital Age

Boyd, David and Thurairajah, Niraj, eds. (2015) ARCOM Doctoral Workshop on Construction Education in the New Digital Age. Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM).

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Abstract

Construction education is at a watershed! While construction education provides knowledge and skills from the past, we are acutely aware that dramatic change is rushing towards us as a result of the rise of the information world and the computer and communications technology that supports it. Even though these inadequacies have raised major concerns, we are unsure what to do as the future is not obvious.

We know that our education and teaching must prepare students for this new, but uncertain, future. However, we need to educate ourselves first in understanding the world of information and its uncertainties. This workshop is arranged to provide that for our academics and educators. We are researching our future.

The BIM tool, which forms the focus of many of the papers here, is the start of these changes. As the papers reveal, we know about the form and operation but little about its implementation. As a result we will not have ready made solutions but need to be proactive in developing these solutions and the skills to support them. Apart from BIM, e-commerce, integrated logistics, offsite manufacture and manufacture to order are some of the other novel ideas that would change construction processes in the near future. To crown these changes, we must also acknowledge that IT developments will significantly impact on education itself.

We need more research to cope with this. We need more discussions and workshops to find a collective purpose to address our future.

ARCOM also seeks to encourage and advance early career researchers. It does this through such workshops in order to develop the research community not just academically but socially so that it is sustainable for the future. This workshop is uniquely supported by CHOBE, the Council of Heads of the Built Environment and CIB W089 Building research and Education both of whom are at the forefront of developing a response to the educational changes. It is these integrated working practices which will be required for future construction education.

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