Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal. The views expressed in this Forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE or the Editorial Board of the journal.

The Washington Accord known as a mutual recognition agreement between national engineering regulatory bodies was signed in 1989 by six founding signatories. Through this mutual recognition agreement the signatories recognize that the formal educational programs accredited by the respective signatories are substantially equivalent. The stated objective of the Washington Accord is to ease the path of engineering graduates to professional registration or licensing in different jurisdictions. Since 1989, the signatories to the Washington Accord has increased threefold with an additional five countries as currently provisional signatories. This rapid expansion is a reflection of the need for international recognition of educational qualifications and competency across borders in an increasingly globalized world. Engineering accreditation bodies, particularly in developing countries, are proactively seeking recognition and mobility of their graduates. Within this context, the Washington Accord celebrates 25 years and charts a course for the next 25 years. This paper examines in detail the position of the U.S. licensing boards on the Washington Accord. It is concluded that with respect to the U.S. licensing boards, the Washington Accord has made only modest inroads in its first 25 years and needs to set a much more ambitious path for the next 25 to achieve truly reciprocal mobility.

Simulations and classroom games are effective hands-on learning tools for construction management students and practitioners. This paper presents the background, methods and results of a new simulation management game called LEBSCO, which simulates aspects of the Last Planner System (LPS) and Lean Production principles. LPS is central to the implementation of Lean Construction, an increasingly popular management approach based on the Toyota Production System and Lean Production. LPS requires continuous and collaborative effort from all stakeholders for the planning and control of a construction project, making it especially appropriate for the experiential learning allowed by simulation. LEBSCO consists of the assembly of Lego™ pieces to form a schematic house, and it is played by teams meeting in rounds simulating weeks of work. Each team is composed of stakeholders, such as a planner, resource suppliers and trade foremen, mirroring the planning and control process of a typical construction project. Participants build the Lego houses first using a Traditional management approach and then using Lean-based approach. A graduate course in construction management at The University of Auckland, New Zealand, is used as a case study to test the effectiveness of LEBSCO as a teaching method. The implementation results of LESBCO demonstrated its capability to transfer and disseminate Lean-based knowledge into construction.

Using a data set from universities in the United States that includes over 17,000 civil engineering (CE) students, this work describes the demographics and outcomes for students starting in, switching into, and transferring into CE to inform the decision making of faculty, department heads, and deans. Pathways in CE vary by race but not gender. Although women generally outpersist men in CE, the difference is small. While Asian and Hispanic men choose CE at lower rates than others, the Asian and Hispanic men who do major in CE have higher graduation rates than expected. Black students of both genders are underrepresented in choosing CE and in completing the degree. Among Asian, Hispanic, and White students, those who start in CE and leave are replaced by those who transfer or switch in, but Black students entering CE later do not make up for the large losses of Blacks who start in CE. The work suggests a range of qualitative questions to better understand CE students.

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in student views of social responsibility by discipline, looking at student reasons for their choice of discipline and online messaging as possible explanations for differences. Civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering students at five universities were surveyed regarding their views of social responsibility, which was measured using 50 questions on a 7-point Likert scale and open-ended response questions. Results showed that environmental engineering students had more positive social responsibility attitudes than civil engineering students, whose attitudes were more positive than mechanical engineering students. The greatest differences were among first-year students, suggesting that a priori perceptions of these disciplines differentiated more than curricular content. This hypothesis was supported by differences in the student motivations for choosing each major and online messaging between these disciplines with respect to elements of social responsibility. Lower social responsibility scores among environmental engineering students at higher ranks were troubling and require further study. This contrasted with stable or higher positive social responsibility scores among mechanical engineering students at higher ranks.

Corruption has been identified as the greatest obstacle to economic and social development. Public construction projects, in particular, face high corruption risk as public construction sector has been consecutively deemed as the most corrupt one. Despite considerable efforts have been undertaken to measure corruption at a nation level, few researchers focus on the measurement of corruption in construction projects. This paper develops a fuzzy measurement model for the potential corruption in public construction projects in China. Through semistructured interviews with 14 experts, and then a questionnaire survey with 188 respondents, 24 measurement items of corruption were identified and further categorized into five constructs. The fuzzy set theory was then adopted to quantify each measurement item, construct, and the overall corruption level. This model can facilitate in evaluating, revealing, and monitoring corruption in public construction projects. Although this paper focuses on measuring corruption in public construction projects in China, similar research methods can be applied in other countries around the world and thus contribute to the global body of knowledge of corruption.

The construction industry has been facing a paradigm shift to integrate new construction requirements, most notably the development of advanced technologies, such as environmental management, information technology, and building information modeling. Timely curriculum reform is therefore necessary for construction education to adapt quickly to the paradigm shift. The aim of this paper is to investigate the gaps between educational attainment and job requirements in the Australian construction industry, based on which further curriculum reform can be conducted. A survey is administered to 252 construction graduates. The results suggest that the most significant gaps are related to technical skills for construction and problem-solving skills. The gaps can be categorized into eight groups based on an exploratory factor analysis. The eight groups are construction technology, information technology, problem-solving skills, construction economics, risk management, basic theories, business management, and sustainability science. It is therefore recommended that curriculum reform be conducted to bridge the gaps between educational attainment and job requirements to prepare construction graduates for the competitive and fast-changing construction environment.