UMIST
Manchester Centre for Civil and Construction Engineering
PO Box 88
Manchester
M60 1QD

Contact:
Dr David R Moore
Tel: 0161 200 4240
Email:david.r.moore@umist.ac.uk

Aims:
The core aims of evaluating contacts with industry were to:

• examine the manner in which industrial panels are used at undergraduate level;
• examine the value of industry-based visiting lecturers with regard to industrial input;
• examine the development implications of providing bespoke programmes for industrial organisations.

Resources:
The primary resource in this case was the time of those involved. A secondary resource was the collection of material in the form of programme information.

Details:
The Manchester Centre for Civil and Construction Engineering has resulted from a process of combination that commenced in 1999. The first stage of this was to combine the department of Civil and Structural Engineering with the department of Building Engineering. The resulting department of Civil and Construction Engineering then combined with the University of Manchester's Civil Engineering provision to form the Manchester Centre. The resulting centre provides a range of programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels from construction management through civil engineering and on to international construction project management.

The undergraduate programmes all have a common requirement to establish links to the relevant sector of the construction industry as part of the various professional institute accreditation processes. This requirement is typically achieved through the use of what are referred to in the centre as ‘industrial panels’. Consequently, the centre has a diversity of industrial input from a number of different sectors that represents a valuable resource with regard to industrial 'validation' of course content. However, it has to be acknowledged that it also represents a considerable drain with regard to the time involved in the management of the various panels.

The centre has therefore considered the possibility of rationalising the number of panels and their membership. As part of this process, the implications of establishing a common industrial panel for all undergraduate programmes have been examined. The identified implications were as follows:

• difficulty in identifying a pool of panel members who would meet the requirements of the four professional institutions involved (CIBSE, CIOB, RICS, ICE);
• concerns over being able to recruit panel members who would be willing to sit on a common panel;
• difficulty in differentiating the feedback and comment from the panel members between specific programmes;
• concerns over the length of time per meeting and / or the number of meetings required to deal with all of the programmes covered by the panel acting as a disincentive to potential members;
• possibility of individual students perceiving a common panel as not being capable of valuing their specific programme.

The process of achieving industrial input to programme development and evaluation was also considered in the light of industrial input to postgraduate programmes. The previous departments of Building Engineering and Civil and Structural Engineering had traditionally viewed the input as being achieved largely in the form of the use of industrial practitioners as visiting lecturers.

However, rationalisation of postgraduate programme content within the new centre is resulting in an increased number of common modules across the postgraduate programmes. This in turn has resulted in the possibility of reducing the number of visiting lecturers within the centre. While this presents the possibility to reduce costs it also reduces the opportunity for lecture content to be delivered in the context of industrial experience by practitioners rather than as theoretical constructs by academics. At present, this dilemma is unresolved and action has been confined to a preliminary reduction of visiting lecturer numbers and a move towards inviting industrial practitioners to undertake (unpaid) guest lectures.

This latter action has been established for some time in the context of research groups such as the Centre for Research in the Management of Projects (CRIMP). It has, however, been largely intended to provide a forum for academic and postgraduate researchers to discuss areas of interest with industrial practitioners. Consequently, it may be required to undergo some evolution in order to provide an industrial connection for students on taught postgraduate programmes. Such a situation would differ from that in which postgraduate programmes are provided at the request of industrial organisations.

Within the centre there are now also a number of programmes that are bespoke to specific industrial organisations, and this situation presents new problems and possibilities. These programmes have come about as a result of connections with industry. However, not all of the organisations involved operate in the construction industry: there are also manufacturing, aerospace and telecommunications organisations involved as customers. This has caused the centre to consider how the culture within the relationship between it and industry has changed from that when industry was simply the recipient of graduates. This process is on going as these new programmes have not yet produced any graduates.

Evaluation:
Evaluation was carried out on the basis of professional institution accreditation requirements and the need to meet any criteria established by industrial organisations paying for the development of bespoke programmes.

Benefits:
As a result of the process of examination, the centre was able to identify the following benefits from the continued input of industrial organisations:

• ability to provide explicit evidence of meeting the accreditation requirements of the various professional institutions with regard to connections with the construction industry;
• a realisation that visiting lecturers who are essentially full-time practitioners in the industry are not always the most appropriate means of bringing the viewpoints of the industry into degree programmes;
• an awareness of the culture change in which specific industrial organisations become more explicit customers when bespoke programmes are developed than is the case when programmes are producing graduates for an industry in general.

Issues and lessons to be learnt:
A number of issues were raised as part of this case study. Of particular relevance in this context are the :

• ongoing strong cultural identity of the various professions as reflected by the professional institutions and the barriers that this presents with regard to implementing concepts such as a single industrial panel common to a number of different programmes;
• issue of ownership with regard to the traditional distinction between academic provision of programmes and industrial 'consumption' of the graduates from those programmes. This distinction is, in some cases, becoming increasingly blurred;
• culture changes involved in questioning the role of visiting lecturers.

Ongoing Developments:
At present, the centre is concentrating on developing an organisational culture in which individuals that were previously members of different departments or universities can regard themselves as working towards common goals. The result is that there is no intention to revisit the issue of industrial input into degree programmes in the near future.