Fostering disciplines' understanding among design and construction students through a design-build senior project

Abstract

With many disciplines involved on a construction project, conflicts and disputes become inevitable. Each discipline, whether designers or contractors, view the project and prioritize the goals from their own perspectives. They also tend to carry misperceptions about each other's roles, which yield to misunderstandings and disagreements, and ultimately delays and cost overruns. Though this is well-rooted, very minor steps have been taken, if any, to address these misperceptions and misunderstandings in our engineering educational institutions or courses. This study, thus, aims at fostering the understanding between design and construction students working on a Design-Build senior project in a civil engineering department. The study uses partnering concepts by creating a senior project environment that fosters collaboration and problem solving. The study entails a 4-step methodology: (1) forming an interdisciplinary senior project team (both civil and construction engineering students), (2) benchmarking perceptions of each other's disciplines through a survey, (3) starting work on the project through activities that intend to foster open communication, trust, and a willingness to solve problems, and (4) retaking the survey to investigate if students perceptions have changed. Results of the study show that, through the interdisciplinary senior project and the structured activities planned, students' perceptions of each other's disciplines, roles, and stereotypes changed, and they were able to gain a better understanding and appreciation of each other's disciplines, and work collaboratively towards the project goals. The study, thus, shows the potential that incorporating such educational activities and experiences in students' learning environment could positively affect their careers making them ready for the increasing trend of integration of designer and builder roles in the larger workforce.