This article is the result of continued research at the University of Alabama’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering relating to management issues in engineering failures. The research shows that many failures occur due to well-known technical issues overlooked by management during the design process. Such failures are often termed errors and omissions. This research further indicates that systematic design quality control and quality assurance, careful communication, and post-design inspection are management techniques that could prevent a large number of engineering failures. In an effort to decrease the incidence of management issues, the authors propose to structure a prototypical standard of professional practice for design management. In developing that structure, the authors (1) explored the nature of standards and the similarities that exist in definitions by various professional organizations and (2) reviewed the standard of care and considered why it may not be the engineering profession’s best resource for evaluating duties and practices.

Increasing diversity is a desirable educational and social goal; therefore, reducing large disparities among students is a critical aspect in civil engineering schools. This paper analyzes the presence of gender, socioeconomic, and institutional disparities based on the outcome of two national standard tests in Colombia: SABER-PRO, a national test that assesses the quality of education in civil engineering programs and SABER-11, a test applied to senior high school students. The results suggest that there are no significant gender differences in topics evaluated by SABER-11, except for physics (favoring males) and verbal skill (favoring females). However, according to SABER-PRO test scores, in all topics under evaluation, men perform better than women, except verbally. This may mean that, in Colombia, the civil engineering educational process is biased toward males, or that the instrument, a standardized multiple choice test, favors men. Moreover, the SABER-PRO test is strongly influenced by institutional and socioeconomic factors, suggesting the existence of gaps related to income, age, gender, and the educational quality of the university in which students are enrolled.

Late payment and nonpayment is explicitly recognized as a widespread problem in the construction sector and recurs in project after project. Although the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act was enacted in 2012 by the Parliament of Malaysia to ease timely and regular payment, it does not apply to a construction contract entered into by a natural person for any construction work involving a building which is less than four stories high and which is wholly intended for his or her occupation. Further, the majority of resident buildings in Malaysia are mostly low-rise buildings that are less than four stories high. Also, CIPA Act 2012 does not address the underlying causes of late payment. This study aims to identify the underlying causes of late payment in the construction sector in a fast-developing economy—Malaysia—and to develop effective solutions to mitigate this kind of risk. A structured questionnaire survey was conducted for contractors registered as Grade 3 to Grade 7 under Malaysian Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB). A sample of 1,000 contractors was selected, approximately 5.3% of the population. Findings reveal that the “cash flow problems due to deficiencies in client’s management capacity” is the most significant underlying cause for late payment. In mitigation of late payment risks, “investigating the owner’s ability to pay” was analyzed as the most effective solution. Indicators for late payment and nonpayment identified in this study enable contractors to forecast payment risks in both the current project and future projects.

A survey was conducted to observe the dynamics between college building information modeling (BIM) education and student career development. The survey results were used to perform a comparative analysis of stakeholder perceptions in the educational and professional communities. The survey findings confirmed substantial gains in BIM adoption and implementation in both communities, and that a gap exists between the rapid growth of the BIM-related job market and the incentives in place to encourage students to commit to a BIM-oriented career path. The survey also evaluated the effectiveness of BIM education in colleges and industry recruiting practices in BIM staffing. The results suggested that an enhanced and more proactive partnership might be the solution to advancing BIM education and BIM talent acquisition in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry.

This paper reports an exploration of e-learning training for construction mediation. One of the most crucial prerequisites for successful implementation of e-learning is the careful consideration of the pedagogical principles, however, this is the most neglected aspect in implementation. In this paper, a pedagogical principle-based experiential e-learning framework is developed by reviewing the major guidelines for development of e-learning programs, pedagogical principles for e-learning, and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. Nine parameters are detailed: intended learning outcomes (ILOs), content development (LCD), concrete experience (CE), reflective observation (RO), learning progress report (LPR), abstract conceptualization (AC), active experimentation (AE), learning assessment report (LAR), and learning interaction and student support (LISS). With a pilot study evaluation, it is found that in this online course the teaching and learning activities (TLAs) are aligned with the ILOs. The LCD designed an effective learning route to help students understand the best way to use the e-learning system and resources. CE, RO, AC, AE and LISS were developed in role-play exercises, which are effective to enhance students’ involvement, interactions, collaboration, exploration, and problem-solving abilities. LPR played an important role in tracking students’ feedback and learning progress. Finally the students’ learning outcomes were evaluated in LAR by the device of logrolling-difference degree (L-DD). With these nine parameters, the pedagogical principle-based experiential e-learning system is developed and explored to deliver effective online construction mediation training.

Student attitudes about the importance of global issues, their interest in global issues, and their interest in working abroad were evaluated using surveys and content analysis of homework assignments from first year civil and environmental engineering students from 2008 to 2011. Civil engineering students ranked globalization as having the lowest importance among 20 ABET and Body of Knowledge skills; environmental engineers ranked its importance significantly higher at fifteenth. International projects were popular among civil engineering students on two course assignments. Final reflective essays revealed that 20% of the civil engineering and 37% of the environmental engineering students, respectively, were interested in working abroad. In a 2011 survey, all civil engineering students indicated at least some level of interest in working on engineering projects outside the U.S. during their careers, either using distance collaboration or via other assignments abroad. Global work interests were higher among female than male students. The results indicate that many American civil engineering students were interested in working abroad and developing global skills.

The process of designing buildings requires both creative and analytical skills to devise innovative building solutions that cannot be generated from analytical skills alone, but traditional teaching and assessment tends to focus on analytical skills. This research begins to address the challenge of encouraging innovation and creativity in the engineering classroom through an open-ended design problem given to students in a first-year engineering course. With only a basic level of prior experience, students created designs for a new exterior wall for an existing building space to make the building perform more sustainably. Students submitted rough sketches of their design ideas along with written documentation illustrating the process that they used to create a design solution to the problem. The responses from the students were analyzed to determine the positive and negative aspects of this open-ended design problem on their education. Students were successful at addressing one or more of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) categories that affect sustainability in their designs and they felt that the activity was beneficial and enjoyable. On the other hand, the submitted designs did not deviate greatly from the existing building design. Students tended to start with one design idea and refine that first idea as long as time would permit, as opposed to experimenting with several possible design iterations. Recommendations are presented to increase the iterations in the design process to improve the educational experience for students.

The current era of e-science and big data calls on researchers to ensure the security and management of their research data. In this case study, researchers from the University of Minnesota Libraries interviewed a graduate student research team and faculty advisor to provide an understanding of the educational gaps that need to be filled to graduate data-savvy engineers. This paper presents the needed data management skills with thoughts on how the engineering discipline and academic research libraries might partner on a shared training solution.