TEACHING INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT THROUGH INTERDEPARTMENTAL COLLABORATIONS

Infrastructure comprises any facility that provides services of transportation, energy, water supply and housing. The ability to construct and properly maintain infrastructure is essential to ensure the economic development, competitiveness and productivity of nations. Thus, trillions of US dollars have been invested over the past decades to maintain the global infrastructure assets. Because of that, teaching infrastructure maintenance is increasingly a key issue in any university degree focused on civil engineering. In order to satisfy the demand from the construction industry, the School of Civil Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València has created a course entitled “Infrastructure Maintenance Management” in the fourth academic year of the B.Sc. in Civil Engineering. This transversal course has been created through an interdepartmental collaboration to train students about integrated maintenance management in each of the different type of infrastructure. The course is divided into general and specific modules. The general module has been defined to offer students the needed knowledge to face the technical specifications provided in the different specific modules associated with each type of infrastructure. Different training techniques have been used in this course focused on individual and collective learning techniques through case study scenarios, small group workshops and presentations, all of them supervised by experts. This course allows the students to be aware of the importance of infrastructure maintenance in order to make decisions regarding the identified needs and the resources available.