THE LEARNING OF BUILDING STRUCTURES FOR THE DEGREE IN BUILDING ENGINEERING IN SPAIN: DESIGN AND APPROACHES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE

The Degree in Building Engineering is the result of the adaptation of the erstwhile qualification “Technical Architecture” into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The new degree prepares for working as Technical Architect, whose professional responsibilities have been nationwide regulated by law even before the implementation of the new degree. During the implementation process of the qualification into the EHEA, the name of the degree and its contents were and still are matters of some controversy. In fact, the degree name varies according to the Spanish university, which offers it. Thus, different names can be found such as Degree in Building, Degree in Technical Architecture and Building Engineering or Degree in Building Engineering, despite all of them enable to work as Technical Architect.

In Spain and regarding professional attributions about building structures, technical architects have some limitations in relation to architects or structural engineers. However, it is a fact that some technical architects collaborate with these other professionals in many projects about building structures during their professional life, despite they cannot sign these projects as competent experts. Added to the aforementioned circumstances is the fact that learning in building structures when higher education were included in the EHEA only implied specific modifications of some older subjects, that is, in some cases there was not a deep review or updating in the learning of this matter.

To address this situation, it is necessary to review the building structures learning in this degree to design it in a global way and attending to professional attributions and some competences that can help to develop a professional activity beyond these attributions, allowing to open new professional lines and profiles.

The aim of this paper is designing the learning-teaching process in building structures for the Degree in Building Engineering. The design is referred to the degree at the University of Seville, where the teaching of structures currently counts on 18ECTS assigned and distributed into three subjects of 6ECTS each.

In the paper, an analysis of the professional attributions, the competences that are regulated by law for a technical architect and the current teaching in structural engineering in the Degree in Building Engineering in Spain has been carried out. A design on the basis of a global continuity is proposed, as well as competences, learning achievements, methodologies and evaluation systems. Beyond the application to this specific degree, the approaches that are presented in this paper can be considered as useful ones in the learning of structural engineering for other qualifications.