Teaching globalization issues to civil engineering students – the international collaborative construction management course

Date

2009-05-22

Author

Soibelman, L,
Akinci, B,
Sacks, R,
Dikmen Toker, İrem
Birgönül, Mustafa Talat
Formoso, C,
Isatto, E,

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Several construction companies have reported that their engineers and project managers are not prepared to deal with the requirements of the increasing globalization that is creating new opportunities with expanding markets all over the world. Construction companies, engineers, and project managers are realizing that their domain knowledge on materials, equipments, construction techniques, management techniques and methods, and social skills are local. Traditional construction management education does not prepare engineers for these challenges. This paper introduces and presents the lessons learned of a course titled “International Collaborative Construction Management” that has been developed and taught to fill this gap. The course exposes students to an international collaboration experience. Students in the US, Turkey, Brazil, and Israel are teamed with students from the other countries, and the teams are expected to present schedules, estimates, risk assessment plans, and process models of a facility to be built in one of the participating countries. Students learn not only how to develop construction estimates and schedules, but also, globalization issues, methods for working on multicultural teams, negotiation techniques, and methods to improve international collaboration enhanced by the use of information technology.

Subject Keywords

Globalization in engineering, International collaboration, Multi cultural teams, Construction management

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/87413

Conference Name

Fifth International Conference on Construction in the 21st Century (CITC-V), 2009

Collections

Department of Civil Engineering, Conference / Seminar

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Citation Formats

L. Soibelman et al., “Teaching globalization issues to civil engineering students – the international collaborative construction management course,” presented at the Fifth International Conference on Construction in the 21st Century (CITC-V), 2009, Istanbul, Turkey, 2009, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/87413.