Academics, through industry demand and involvement, are beginning to realize that educating our future engineers in building information modeling (BIM) technology utilizing an integrated project delivery (IPD) collaboration and design approach needs to be a frontrunner of education. As a result, academia is now challenged with the task of determining how to develop these specialized skill sets in engineering students such that the professional demand and focus of incorporating the proper skills in educational practices are met to address the issues and limitations that incur in new practices. This paper outlines the development, implementation, and results of a 3-year multidisciplinary team pilot program within architectural engineering (AE) at Penn State University encompassing structural, mechanical, lighting/electrical, and construction engineering disciplines, focusing on the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry needs. Built into this pilot are strong connections to industry professionals in order to facilitate understanding of the discipline and team knowledge in students before they enter the industry as professionals. Teams focus on actual industry projects, allowing for experiences the industry has deemed highly valuable. The results to date indicate that the combination of technical depth and integrated multidisciplinary collaboration have yielded results consistent with those originally requested by industry reviewers.

Developing engineers must be aware that technological development and emerging global issues will require a keen sense of ethical responsibility. Therefore, they must be prepared to reason through and act appropriately on the ethical dilemmas they will experience as professionals. From a civil engineering professional perspective, graduates need to conform to the ASCE Body of Knowledge as they prepare for the Vision of 2025. This investigation evaluated different institutional approaches for ethics education with a goal of better preparing students to be ethical professionals. The project included visiting 19 diverse partner institutions and collecting data from nearly 150 faculty and administrators and more than 4,000 engineering undergraduates including 567 civil engineering undergraduates who completed the survey. Findings suggest that co-curricular experiences have an important influence on ethical development, that quality of instruction is more important than quantity of curricular experiences, that students are less likely to be satisfied with ethics instruction when they have higher ethical reasoning skills, and that the institutional culture makes affects how students behave and how they articulate concepts of ethics. Overall, regression analysis indicates that civil engineering student responses were consistent with the overall engineering undergraduate population. Finally, the research suggests the curricular foundation is in place, but that institutions need to improve their curricular and co-curricular offerings to facilitate ethical development of students and fulfill ASCE Body of Knowledge outcomes.

This article describes the study developed as a topic for master’s dissertation for a civil engineering course, the project being to construct a Roman fortification for historical recreation purposes. It is a nonprofit project for sociocultural purposes and the aim is to promulgate and appreciate the history and legacy related to the classical Roman era. Inherent to this study are the strong links among history, archaeology, the history of architecture, and civil engineering (design and construction). The work focuses on the challenge of creating buildings that meet the functional requirements of today while retaining the image and uses typical of Roman military buildings, without it becoming a pastiche. The constructive solutions developed to achieve a balance between these two factors are analyzed and described. Thus, in this study, the authors used historical inferences to support the draft of a building to be erected over a short time span and that reproduces the classical era within the constraints of modern buildings. A Roman fort is to be built for the purpose of historical reenactment and experimental archaeology, and we attempted to answer the following questions: What would the various buildings comprising a Roman fort look like? What materials would have been used? How would each have functioned? and What would they be like to live in? The buildings studied include the headquarters, barracks, stables, hospital, workshop, latrines, granary, and baths. Archaeological and historical information was collected for each building on which to base its architecture, which was made compatible with the structural calculation and comfort, modern legislation, the wishes of the project owner, and factors that would allow visitors and reenactors to enjoy the space. Very recently a commission was received to build a small fort, with only one barracks, in the north of Portugal as part of a multiera theme park, and almost a hundred international bookings have been received before construction has even started. Only after the Roman fort is built in Vendas Novas in the north of Portugal will it be possible to assess the success of the project, through visitor numbers.

It is widely accepted that the evolution of building information modeling (BIM) is increasingly affecting the roles of construction management professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Since the transition from 2D drafting to BIM is more of a process transformation, the use of BIM also affects how information is managed by and for construction management professionals. Teaching BIM in construction engineering and management (CEM) curriculum requires more emphasis on learning BIM as a process improvement methodology rather than only a technology. This paper describes the implementation of a graduate level course called “Building Information Modeling for Capital Projects” that was developed to educate next-generation construction managers to understand BIM and effectively use an existing BIM in plan execution for building construction projects. This is a project-based course where students gain knowledge on the implementation of BIM concepts throughout the life cycle of a building. A process-oriented teaching approach was applied in the course and is introduced in the paper. Findings and lessons learned to date from the teaching experience are documented.