This is a continuing series of quarterly articles on lessons learned and best practices in civil engineering education. The intent of the series is to reinforce good practices, describe new or developing practices, and provide a forum for what works well and what does not. It is hoped that this series will be an important quarterly read for all civil engineering educators and all those interested in what’s going on in civil engineering education today. Authors and topics will vary from issue to issue. Contact the associate editor, Mark Evans, at mark.evans @usma.edu if you wish to contribute to an upcoming issue. Managing Changing Classroom Expectations

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is rapidly becoming a mainstream option to traditional litigation in the United States. Its effectiveness in resolving private-sector construction disputes has been proven, and its benefits, for the most part, uncontroverted. Sufficient attention, however, has not been given to adapting ADR for use on public projects. Public construction operates in a unique context, where the institutional realities facing a public owner can undermine the effectiveness of even the most promising ADR method. This paper discusses the characteristics of ADR, its acknowledged benefits, and the extent of our present ability to realize those benefits in public construction. Measures for tailoring ADR for its effective use in the public sector are offered.

The construction industry has a propensity to disputes dating back thousands of years, at least to the time of the Hammurabi Code. As a result, the industry devised alternative methods for dispute resolution to avoid the civil litigation. Since the late nineteenth century, the traditional two-step process has been included in standard construction contracts. The engineer first renders a determination, followed by binding arbitration if either the owner or contractor disagreed with the engineer’s decision. In the last half of the twentieth century, the industry has reexamined this traditional two-step method. This examination has produced a multistep dispute resolution process consisting of (1) loss prevention and dispute avoidance, (2) direct negotiations, (3) facilitated direct negotiations with preselected standing neutrals, (4) issue specific outside neutral facilitated negotiations, and (5) binding adjudication. This paper examines the evolution of this multistep dispute resolution process within the construction industry.

The importance of management to the long-term careers of practicing professional engineers has long been recognized. Undergraduate engineering education should therefore provide an exposure to the management skills required by engineers in professional practice. For the rational and effective design of undergraduate engineering management studies, it is essential to understand the nature of engineering management and to identify those management skills identified as important by practicing professional engineers. Through an investigation of the recent literature, the management skills considered important by engineering stakeholder groups are identified and ranked. This information is supplemented by recent surveys conducted by the author of stakeholders in Australia, including academic staff, mature age undergraduate students, and recent graduates of the engineering programs at Deakin University in Australia. Based on an examination of the literature and original research, a framework of ranked classified management skills is proposed. Broadly, the ranking framework is generic professional skills first, followed by general management skills and technical discipline specific management skills, followed by other professional discipline skills and theoretical skills.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon presented unique teachable moments to engineering educators but with the competing demand to complete the course as designed and as dictated by the tyranny of the syllabus. A questionnaire was administered to undergraduate students enrolled in three professional ethics courses in 2001 and 2002 to ascertain the extent to which their instructors used the events as teachable moments. For comparison, the questionnaire was administered 1 year after the attacks to students enrolled in courses of an academic enrichment program at Duke University and environmental science students at North Carolina Central University. The percentage of courses addressing the events was highest in the Fall 2001 semester, when the attacks occurred, falling in the Spring 2002 semester, but increasing in Fall 2002. Most respondents supported the use of the events as teachable moments even if the syllabus and course outline had to be adjusted. The results indicate that engineering education must be open to opportunities to teach physical science and engineering concepts and to introduce the students to the social sciences and humanities.

With the rapid increase in the utilization of design/build project delivery, there arises a need for continuing education of the professionals in this industry. This paper describes research conducted through a national survey of owners, designers, and builders to determine the best course of action to address the continuing education needs of this industry. By modeling the design/build life cycle into six main phases of project initiation, risk allocation, performance specification, project planning, construction administration, and project closeout, the most critical educational areas are identified. The conclusion from this research is that the areas needing special attention are (1) benefits and cautions of delivery systems; (2) budget and contingencies; (3) owner’s objectives and needs; (4) cost estimating; (5) project timeline; and (6) cost and schedule control. A principal component analysis of the results discovered the following seven groupings of educational topics or “learning modules”: (1) the delivery decision; (2) estimating and scheduling during design; (3) proposal preparation and response; (4) contract fundamentals; (5) construction administration; (6) facilities commissioning; and (7) insurance and financing.