Abstract:

Construction management is a term widely used in the industry that has plenty of examples and applications in business life. However, it is a new visitor to the field of education as a complete program for the undergrad students, which results in a lack of benchmarks among other university programs. At Prince Sultan University (PSU), under the umbrella of the College of Engineering (CE), a newly established department of Engineering Management (EM) hosts two programs: Construction Management (CMP) and Production and Manufacturing Management (PMP). This research will focus on the first program as the author's affiliation. Students of CMP usually receive repeated questions from other engineers in the market related to their major's name: is it oriented to civil engineering or other "known" programs? Most of the students got confused about the answer and return to their instructors to get clear answers. As undergrad students are still primary in information and knowledge about this area, sometimes they feel confused about their major and whether it is worthy or may need some modifications to look familiar. The uncertainty by adding a management dimension to construction engineering goes beyond students and reaches the society, especially other engineers who were graduated from regular programs (no management). This paper monitors and analyzes stakeholders' feedbacks to this new program, which is mainly based on management, including their queries and concerns, then evaluates the whole experience through the different official surveys' results.

Keywords:

Construction management; engineering education; civil engineering; engineering management