A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
With increasing fees in Higher Education (HE) employability and a return for their investment is becoming a priority for students. HE institutions therefore need to ensure that its curriculum encompasses skills required for employability. It has also been recognised that an adequate supply of well-educated engineering graduates is required to ensure that UK industry is not disadvantaged.
Engineering businesses require engineers with abilities and attributes in two broad areas - technical understanding and enabling skills. These enabling skills include communication skills team-working skills and business awareness of the implications of engineering decisions and investment. It can clearly be seen that more than just technical skills are required to produce a ‘well educated Engineer’ and that key or transferable skills are also important
This presentation will explore how Liverpool John Moores University have recently utilised Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a tool to help students improve on some of these transferable skills as well as their ability to visualise construction projects. This project required students across a number of Level 5 Built Environment Programmes to work collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams. This is the first time that the Civil Engineers have participated in such a collaborative project. Multidisciplinary teams were seen as key since it has been previously recognised how exclusion of multi-disciplinary team working can reinforce the barriers between the built environment professions. It was hoped that the Civil engineers would gain an understanding how good communication between each profession is vital to a successful construction project.
