Abstract:

Collaboration has become a buzzword, whether describing tertiary educational delivery modes or themes in industry related conferences, or touted by leaders in the construction industry sector. Educational organisations would not thrive without collaboration, and hence the term collegiality. Over the last two years or so, the Department of Construction at Unitec NZ, has been developing and facilitating delivery modes such as blended learning, flipped learning, and project based learning for our undergraduate construction management and construction economics students. Teamwork and real-world learning is the norm, but how real is integrated collaboration in our construction industry as yet ? Integrated design and construction management (IDCM), is an undergraduate course at the institute that has, as the focus, working collaboratively in industry, meaning integrated client, consultant and contractual teams from the briefing stage right through to the finish of the project. The specific learning approach and delivery method of the IDCM course is therefore both collaborative and integrated. The students’ learning journey including assessment criteria, requires them to meet with senior company representatives and review a range of commercial scale projects, and associated case studies. The aim being to establish the extent to which improvements could be made, or have been made, by adopting and implementing an integrated approach. How the course is delivered and assessed is compared to the findings from industry and presented in this paper.

Keywords:

Tertiary education, realworld learning, construction industry, integrated collaboration.