Long-Term Significance of a CII Best Practices Course

The Construction Industry Institute (CII) was established to improve the cost-effectiveness, safety, timeliness, and quality of the construction industry. Through research, more than a quarter of a century after it was chartered, CII has been able to establish 15 best practices and to document their effect in making significant strides to improve the delivery of capital projects in the United States and around the globe. In 2007, CII began an effort to formally expose graduate students to these best practices by developing a graduate-level course taught by industry professionals from CII member companies. After its sixth offering in 2012, more than 800 students distributed across the United States and Canada in multiple universities have learned about CII and about the role that CII’s best practices have played in improving the construction industry. The course has proven itself to be a win-win-win-win for students-faculty-industry-CII. This paper describes the course evolution as well as its significance; it shows positive feedback from the students with respect to the value as perceived by them.