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CIBSE Technical Symposium, Edinburgh, UK 14-15 April 2016 : Paper 111 : MacLaren & Birchall

Learning TogetherPreparing collaborative professionals for future practice in the built environment industry

PRINCIPAL AUTHOR : ALEX MACLAREN BA(HONS), MA(CANTAB) RIBA, RIAS, FRSA School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society (EGIS), Heriot-Watt [email protected]

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR : DR SARAH BIRCHALL BENG (HONS) SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION GROUP, BSRIA [email protected]

Abstract Inspired by the 2015 Report ‘Collaboration for Change’ (Paul Morrell, (1)) this paper presents a thesis from an early-career-stage interdisciplinary professional group. We propose why cross-disciplinary teaching and learning in built environment Higher Education is essential; with particular emphasis on whole-career engagement, and integrating planning for the operational phase into design-stage teamwork.The paper references extant teaching initiatives and innovations across built environment disciplines, and professional criteria from CIBSE, RICS, CIOB, ICE, IStructE, BIFM, and the RIBA1. A mapping exercise identifies the emergence of the transient professional, sitting between institutional silos. The paper identifies the collaborative role of the built environment professional in the future construction industry.

Keywords Engineering Education; Construction; Collaboration; Higher Education; Facilities Management; Built Environment; Professional Education.

1 The Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers; the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; the Chartered Institute of Builders, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers, the British Institute of Facilities Management, and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

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Background: the young professionals’ perspective.

Built Environments are a collaborative endeavour, as are so many products which really change the world. The best innovations in our built environment are projects or products that appeal to us all: end-users, investors, aesthetes, managers, designers, from the baby boomers to the digital generations X and Y. A product that can really deliver across those interests is seldom, if ever, the genius creation of a single mind, certainly not from a single discipline.

And yet the authors’ own experience of education was that of studying a solitary discipline. Enthused by a shared wish to use design to improve our collective future (through the medium of those fascinating assets: buildings), our paths towards Chartership (with RIBA and CIBSE, respectively) have been very different. Each of us has learned from some excellent teachers, and slowly developed knowledge, ability, and even excellence in our specialist fields. We conversed with our peers and imagined powerful innovations. Our ambitions to prosper in our professions, led us to choose accredited courses of several years in length, delivered by respected institutions. It was not until we graduated from these courses, however, that we had the experience of working with others across the construction industry, and applying and communicating some of that specialist knowledge, and enthusiasm, in a collaborative endeavour.

Even more strikingly, it was several more years until were directly asked to apply our specialist knowledge through communication with an individual who would go on to manage the asset we were creating. The mention of ‘client’ in education was even less frequent than the mention of a co-professional. A facilities manager, if noted in lectures, was certainly not spoken of as a potential member of the design team.

We know that the operational and maintenance phase of a built asset contributes 70-80% of its lifetime financial costs (2) and 55-80% of its carbon emissions (3)2. Of the small minority costs and emissions that are directly controlled at the pre-operation phase, we know that building services engineers or architects might contribute anywhere between 7-60% of that multidisciplinary design/construction-stage project team (4)3. At best then, these individuals might impact a maximum of 27% of the asset costs and energy use; at worst case a dispiriting 1.4%, unless they can communicate, motivate and influence beyond the confines of their discipline. And yet

2 These figures discount the cost of operating the business, but compare design/construction costs (C) with the hard and soft costs of maintaining/operating the building (F). Financial estimates of this are shown by Ive 2006 to be circa 1:3, e.g. 75% on operation and maintenance. Energy costs are estimated by Lane, 2010 as 20-30% in3 http://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Building_design_and_construction_fees . In order to provide a broad indication of relative consultant input, we have assumed a brutal correlation of fee to design input. The indicative fee figures for Architects and Services Engineers published here for various sizes of project have been summarized to give the printed figure. Building Services engineers’ fees as indicated make up 7-12% of the total consultant team fees: architects 50-60%.

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http://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Building_design_and_construction_fees


the UK routinely spends between 3-5 years4 exclusively teaching erstwhile young professionals in disciplinary silos to learn, discuss, and innovate wholly within their own fields, independent of input from other disciplines or clients. The sphere of impact of these students’ professional roles will spread many hundreds of times wider than the peers we expose them to in education, yet for the core years of their professional education we teach them only to communicate with, and value the opinions of, this select, similar group.

Figure 1 – Scope of Educational Engagement vs Industry Activity

Collaborating for Change: BIM 2050 and The Edge

The Authors’ frustration with limits of their education as a preparation for the collaborative professional workplace has been reflected in similar experiences and attitudes reported by colleagues with in the Construction Industry Council (CIC) BIM2050 Group, representing young professionals from across the construction industry. Current group members, installed in March 2015, include engineers, contractors, designers and technicians, spanning memberships of thirteen construction institutions. The shared frustration of such diverse group members is clear evidence of a widespread problem with current construction education.

The publication of Paul Morrell’s report Collaboration for Change (1) in May 2015 struck a chord with the group. This document is the result of data collection and research from several industry-wide Edge Debates (5) and a series of journal articles collected in a special issue of Building Research and Information (6). The final report sets a challenge to construction institutions to place collaboration at the top of their

4 CIBSE CEng 4/5 years, RIBA Part1 3/4 years, Part 2 1/2 years. Source: CIBSE, RIBA of 20


agendas, and a warning that not to do so may see their relevance to industry recede. The CIC BIM2050 Group read this ‘as a call to arms…. to embrace our cross-disciplinary nature, and lead from the front’ (7). The group has a shared energy to promote and foster collaborative relationships and collaborative learning between professional disciplines: in pursuit of effective communication and application of technical excellence. It is striking that the strategic priorities of this early-career group reflect so closely the recommendations from a voluntary senior cross-industry group, aligned far more closely than with the perceived strategic priorities of the ‘representative’ institutions. This paper reflects a small part of the group’s research - construction industry education - and discusses the relevance of current educational and policy initiatives to the particular area of building operation and facilities management.

Figure 2 – The BIM 2050 Group (pictured) meet at the CIC in May 2015

Incentives for Collaboration

This paper is not an argument for the ‘normalisation’ of construction education or a return to the fabled master-builder, an impossibly omniscient professional. It is an argument for diversity and specialised excellence, but predicated on the necessity to practise and hone essential skills of multi-disciplinary and inter-professional team-working, and embracing the requirement to fully engage facilities operations and management from the earliest stages of brief and design development. It calls on institutions, via their accreditation or authorship of our training programmes for young people, to value and promote the practising of interdisciplinary inter-group collaboration skills on a par with discipline-specific intra-group communication skills.

The increased facility of technology has given us an ability to automate menial calculations and management that previously demanded hours of human endeavour. Simultaneously however, technological advances have complicated the components and strategies incorporated in our projects, requiring greater knowledge and expertise in order to effectively synthesize complex constituents. This synthesis requires a broad understanding across disciplines, demanding diverse practitioners to work together in a forum of trust and collaboration. The communication of complex specialist concepts to a non-specialist audience, and the receipt and understanding of similar communications, is no easy task, and we argue should be instilled through our institutionally-prescribed education. A key challenge of professional education is that ‘[Aspiring professionals… have to develop the capability to manifest their understanding [of the disciplinary content of a professional curriculum] to others.’ (Guile, 2014, (8))

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Traditional ‘siloed’ delivery of education results in discipline-specific language, specifically creating a barrier to effective inter-group communication. A pertinent comparison of the jargon used by architects and mechanical/electrical engineers, (Dadji 1998, in (9)) demonstrates clearly the misunderstandings possible based on assumptions about the meanings of words. Dainty, Moore and Murray conclude that the state of inter-disciplinary communication within construction is a barrier to the evolution of the industry, stating ‘effective communication structures should form a precursor to any attempt to change the way in which the industry operates’. (9)

Since that observation in 2007, structures for communication within the industry, both social and technical, have undergone a period of rapid change. From a social point of view, we are familiar with the rise of digital communications, and the proliferation of knowledge (and the speed of knowledge exchange), facilitated by instantaneous electronic communications. This has enabled the emergence of thousands of diverse networks of people, disregarding previous boundaries of physical or institutional connectivity. These new networks (10) are transforming our notions of how, and with whom, we communicate and collaborate. Traditional hierarchical, meritocratic and procedural communication channels are broken apart, as technology enables an extensive network of transdisciplinary connections, a valuable ‘information conduit’ seen by Eddy (2010, (11)) as ‘a form of [Bordieu’s] social capital’, primarily because of its ability to ‘leverage capital’ [of all kinds].

Beyond Building Information Modelling

Principally, for the UK construction industry, the emergence of BIM (Building Information Modelling) as the UK Government’s preferred means of recording and exchanging construction information (12), and specifically the target of BIM collaboration on all public construction projects by 2016, has demanded swift action by industry, regulations and educationalists. The substance of this action will be discussed in the following section: however the increasing pace of change in technology and information exchange already suggests that BIM itself is not a realistic target; ‘it is not just about modelling or intelligent design, but ultimately represents our emerging digital capabilities as an industry, and our future potential to meet these demands.’ (13)

Alongside these rapid changes in our immediate professional context, we are aware of a much greater challenge: the combined pressures of dwindling natural resources, increased global population, increased energy demand, and food and water poverty. The built environment sector is a primary contributor to this situation, and, it follows, can be a hugely powerful agent of change in the management of a sustainable future. The priority and driver for most, if not all young people entering the construction industry is to work together and innovate to build that sustainable future. Construction education at all levels must support this primary aim.

It is clear that the technical and social landscape within which construction professionals operate is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Equally clear is the absolute necessity of professionals to be able to effectively collaborate and

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communicate across disciplines, and in both design and operation, in order to engage new technologies and opportunities.

Essential Communication between Industry Professionals

This paper goes on to discuss current methods and processes for collaboration; how collaboration is viewed by accrediting professions in the construction industry; and how professional institutions can support future industry professionals to work together to provide a sustainable global future.

The Role of the Facilities Management Professional

Facilities Management (FM) is a ‘young’ profession when viewed alongside traditional construction industry institutions, though the functional FM role significantly pre-dates ‘professionalisation’.. BIFM, the British Institute of Facilities Management, was formed in 1993 (14), and in 1995 was still developing professional qualifications. In 2015, BIFM accredits qualifications at all levels, including Bachelors or Masters Degrees offered at five UK universities (15). The RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) offer a Facilities management pathway to Chartership (16), and CIBSE (The Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers) provide Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses in Facilities Management (17). Though lacking the c19th institutional heritage of peer professions, there is now no doubt of the importance on professional education in Facilities Management.

The earlier argument about the importance of lifetime financial and energy costs during the operational phase of the asset in is made in another way by Nutt (18), who asserts that at any one time, 91% of building stock is in use, with a further 5% siting vacant and only the remaining 4% currently under the focus of design and construction professionals. She also argues that:

“until a decade ago the needs of the building user were a basic reference point in architectural design education… [but]… human use and function of buildings hardly figure now in the curricula of most UK schools of architecture. No attention is given to facilities management issues as early options are considered and as preliminary design proposals are made…..Facilities education should take the lead role here, to ensure that the interests of consumer and user are represented when these key decisions are taken. The adoption of neglected areas of this kind will help to consolidate the focus of the facilities management role as the profession develops.”

More recently, Alexander (19) agrees that the professional scope of a facilities manager is much wider than ‘fire-fighting’ and pragmatism;

“to improve building performance is the goal- not to manage an overhead more effectively, but to seek to remove it entirely.”

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However the current integration of FM education with other built environment disciplines, and indeed any connection to the topical concerns of the construction and built environment industry, seems particularly poor. The detailed criteria of BIFM’s professional standards framework (15) make no mention of ‘BIM’ or of ‘interdisciplinary collaboration’; most notably, there are no mentions at all of involvement in the design or construction phase of an asset, bar a note on influencing the accessibility of buildings for senior management level (ibid). It would seem that BIFM’s own criteria do not see a significant role for FM in the design and construction of new built (or significantly retrofitted) assets.

This situation is changing rapidly, and there is evidence that institutional and professional criteria, as cited above, are lagging behind. It is heartening to note that Total Facility Management, a book considered by many to be a key text in FM education since its first publication in 2000, has significantly increased its sections on BIM in the most recent, 4th edition published in 2015 (20). The sections relating directly to ‘information management’ have increased three fold from the 3rd edition (Chapter 16, 10 pages) to the fourth edition (Chapter 15, 30 pages), and now include specific reference to design-stage tender input, and to the BSRIA Soft Landings framework.

Enabling Communication between Design Phase and Operation Phase

The ‘performance gap’ between the design stage estimates and the actual, operational-stage performance in terms energy, occupant satisfaction and comfort has been reported in recent research studies (21) and other projects in industry. Both public and private clients are acutely aware of operational costs, and in many ways the efficacy of the UK government’s commitment to Building Information Modelling is contingent on successful communication across the lifespan of the built asset. BIM at its core is about ‘a managed approach to the collection and exploitation of information for projects and assets’(22). It is about whole-life custodianship, where information management is critical. The format of that information is crucial, in order to allow the widest-possible group of agents and software to access the data. Level 2 BIM, the method of working that has been set as a minimum target by the UK government for all work on public-sector work by 2016, is concerned with file-based collaboration that must meet the requirements set out within the following components:

Figure 3 – Components required by BIM Level 2 collaboration

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1. BS 1192:2007+A1:2015 (Collaborative production of AEC information)

2. PAS 1192-2:2013 (Information management for projects)

3. PAS 1192-3:2014 (Information management for assets)4. BS 1192-4:2014 (Information exchange)

5. PAS 1192-5:2015 (Security-minded information management)

6. BS 8536-1:2015 (Project briefing including FM & handover)

7. BIM Protocol (Contractual amendments)

8. GSL (Government Soft Landings)9. Digital plan of work

10.Classification


There is often a lot of focus on the project or capital stage of a project, yet as shown above, the operational stage accounts for the large part of the whole life and is the project stage which arguably stands to benefit the most from the adoption of BIM. PAS1192-3 ‘Specification for information management for the operational phase of assets using building information modelling’ 5 , published in 2014, seeks to define essential procedures to link design and operation stages. The document develops the processes described in earlier 1192 publications for use in the operational life of assets. It is an important document for the FM industry as it sets out the need for comprehensive and accurate information and describes the AIM (asset information model), which can be used as the basis for all asset-related decision making, during operation. It describes how the AIM must be kept up-to-date to accurately reflect the status of the asset. In short, the success of these processes is predicated on the engagement of the FM professional in maintaining the model. And yet it appears FM education is not required to include BIM in the curriculum, and design education fails to emphasis the operational asset stage. Industry efforts to improve current gaps in collaboration are yet to be supported in educational initiatives.

There is a potentially huge benefit to the efficacy and agency of the FM professional who embraces the opportunities offered by BIM. In order to operate an asset effectively, the FMs needs access to a whole range of information. The benefit BIM brings to operations is the richness of the information. BIM as a methodology helps capture all sorts of information about that asset, and makes it available for use during operation. A collaborative and inclusive working environment allows FMs to get engaged and start communication at the start of projects to ensure the information needed is stated up-front and provided, enabling the operators to meet the needs of the users.

BIM offers the potential to strip the waste from our processes by sharing validated data and making the right information available at the right time, allowing better decisions to be made around life cycle management of assets, improving efficiencies, cost reductions and even carbon reductions. The failure currently to fully engage FM educators in BIM learning, and alongside other construction professional courses, is a critical threat to the efficacy of the BIM mandate.

When does information need to be shared?

Whilst the strategic communication framework detailed above, if instituted across the supply chain, should ensure effective data sharing between design- construction- and operation- phases, there remains a need to encourage interdisciplinary exchange of complex ideas at every stage of the design process. The effective problem-solving abilities of an individual require a holistic overview, necessitating inter-personal and inter-professional communication, at each stage, to effectively understand and develop solutions.

5 PAS 1192-3 describes new concepts such as organizational information requirements (OIR) – the information which the organisation needs to know in order to run the business, the asset information requirements (AIR) – the information the organisation needs about the asset it is responsible for, and the asset information model (AIM) – the information or data set which describes the asset.

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Soft Landings is framework for a graduated handover process that is adopted across the whole project and focuses on operational outcome through better briefing, handover and building performance in-use (22). It relies on effective communication, collaborative working and encourages a ‘no-blame’ culture. This combined with the BIM approach from the design team, is intended ensure that the information requirements are communicated effectively so that information is available at the operational stage, and to support ongoing maintenance. The combined processes represent a step-change in traditional practice. Adopting Soft Landings and BIM will involve a culture change within the industry.

The Soft Landings stages as defined in the framework document6 are:

1. Inception and briefing

2. Design development and review

3. Pre-handover

4. Initial aftercare

5. Years 1-3 Extended aftercare and POE

The Soft Landings methodology uses the concept of ‘pitstopping’ – a series of reality-checking workshops that allows all members of project delivery team to periodically reconsider critical design issues, technologies and processes by focusing on the perspective of the end user, thinking about the usability and planning for pre-handover, commissioning and post-handover fine-tuning activities.

Twelve core principles should be adopted in their entirety in order for a construction project to be deemed a true Soft Landings project. Of particular note are ‘involvement of the building manager and the end users [in the early stages and design process]’, ‘focus on operational outcomes’ and ‘communicate and inform’ (22). These principles are not well-represented in the experience of professional education for construction.

Soft Landings provides a ‘golden thread’ which links between the procurements process, initial occupant and long term monitoring, review, post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and feedback by setting and maintaining client and design aspiration that are both ambitious and realistic, and managing them through the whole procurement process and into use, providing support, detecting problems and undertaking fine tuning and drawing important activities into the design and construction process which are often rare and disconnected. POE data, now made available by Innovate UK on several extant projects (23), provides fertile applied scenario bases for academic enquiry. The huge potential for powerful student learning in this data-rich environment is untapped.

6 The Soft Landings Framework, BSRIA Guide BG54/2014 of 20


Currently in industry, many techniques of project feedback and POE are aimed at one particular stage of a project or to suit a single discipline or element such as building services engineering. Many are used solely in the post-occupancy stage when it is often too late to tackle the strategic problems that originate in briefing, design and project management. Soft Landings provides a process carrier for these techniques, so helping to unite all disciplines and all stakeholders and to extend the procurement process beyond handover.

First published in 2009, Soft Landings is only now making it into HEI curricula. A 2013 report advocating embedding BIM within academic curricula (24) makes only a single mention on Soft Landings; suggesting it as a topic suitable for ‘postgraduate knowledge’. The laudable vision of the document authors is ‘To foster integrated collaborative working on projects over the lifecycle of the asset through academic involvement and enhancement of BIM.’ The report documents representation from the traditional built environment professional courses. There is no mention of facilities management or FM courses as part of the perceived BIM curricula remit.

The Accreditation of Built Environment Professionals

We have established that the ‘new’ profession of Facilities Management has little reference in its current educational framework to the major construction industry challenges of harnessing technology and improving cross-disciplinary collaboration. It is interesting then to analyse the systems of accreditation, and the relevant criteria, against which education in (and membership of), other more ‘traditional’ construction disciplines is measured.

The competence criteria for the Member grade of CIBSE (MCIBSE) (25) is aligned to the Competence Statements issued by the Engineering Council, as part of the UK-SPEC for Chartered Engineer (CEng) registration (26). Similar to other institutions, to become a Member of CIBSE an applicant has to demonstrate competence within the field of Building Services Engineering in accordance with 17 key objectives in the competence criteria. While CIBSE does acknowledge the value of cross-disciplinary working and collaboration within the criteria (in (ref A2, C1 and D3), more emphasis could be put on the importance of collaborative working and an appreciation of how the disciplines and the work from each are linked, impact on or feed into the those of their co-professionals.

Qualification as an Architect in the UK, and chartership with the RIBA, is ultimately governed by the criteria in a single document (27), which also govern each stage of accredited professional education. Of the 44 individual criteria listed, three specifically mention collaboration with co-professionals, and five, the ‘end-user’. These words were introduced at the last revision of the professional criteria in 2011, and reflect a movement towards more collaborative, operation-phase-engaged education: but remain a small minority in a long list of criteria dominated by theoretical and technical knowledge requirements.

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Accreditation of professional education by the RICS and Chartered Institute of Builders (CIOB) operate in a similar way, and do make specific mention of collaboration. The RICS ‘core’ competencies include ‘Communication and Negotiation’ and ‘Teamworking’ (though no specific mention is made of cross-disciplinary teams) (28). The CIOB framework (29) is more explicit: the criteria require individuals to “Demonstrate Respect for [construction team] members and their role within the construction industry”.

Other engineering disciplines, as CIBSE above, are governed by the Engineering Council UK-SPEC as a baseline, which itself makes frequent mention of multi-disciplinary working or communication. Finally, the Higher Education Authority (HEA) Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) produces ‘Subject Benchmark Statements’ for Construction, Property and Surveying (30); Architecture (31); and Engineering (32). These documents all specifically mention an expectation for collaboration across disciplines; for example, for the graduate ‘to work effectively with others within the context of a multidisciplinary team.’ (30). There is also mention in each of a ‘global’ context and the importance of professional communication.

There is evidence across the built environment professions, of an awareness of the importance of professional inter-communication in the criteria for construction education, demonstrated by the accreditation criteria of construction institutions and higher education regulators. There is conversely little or no reference to the use of modern technologies, strategies and tools for communication. In fact, the only specific mention of BIM found in the above literature was in relation to the RICS FM pathway, which specifies BIM as an optional ‘Level 2’ competency (28). This reticence to name technology is perhaps not surprising, given the pace of change; however it is arguably the lack of just such a requirement which is preventing the widespread teaching of Building Information Modelling and its associated processes and strategies in most higher education courses to date.

Current Practices in Built Environment Education

As noted earlier, the authors’ experience of their learning in Higher Education Institutions was found lacking as a suitable preparation for the modern, interdisciplinary professional arena. Learning was experienced in disciplinary ‘silos’, and despite being based in a School incorporating students and tutors of many built environment professions, there was little collaborative teaching and learning. The short exercises which did involve working across disciplines were generally inspiring, but often difficult, and generally short, infrequent, and ungraded. Staff with one specialisation often made little effort (or had limited ability) to step outside their own discipline and teach across the industry. The message experienced was to communicate the complex meat of your theories or designs only to a peer or staff member within your discipline; and to value only the opinions of those within your specialised area.

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Construction is not the only industry where inter-disciplinary collaboration is essential to success. In healthcare and medical training, ‘Inter-Professional Education’ (IPE) has been ‘recognised internationally since the 1980s’ (Buring et al, 2009, in (33). A growing body of literature (D’Amour, 2005; Barr, 2013; Senior and Telford, 2015) supports the efficacy and validity of preparing future professional for collaborative practice in industry through inter-disciplinary professional education.

Indeed the pressure to teach and to learn collaboratively is beginning to increase from both within and without academia, as industry demands more rounded professionals with interpersonal skills, and experience in the application of knowledge; and pedagogic trends in academia move more towards experiential, reflective learning, studio-based design and application, and peer learning techniques. The four UK Royal Academy of Engineering ‘Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design’ (Loughborough, University College London, Sheffield University and Heriot-Watt University) seek to lead the way in inter-disciplinary construction learning. However there remain a number of barriers to teaching collaboratively across disciplines.

In August 2015, Heriot-Watt University hosted a Seminar on Interdisciplinary collaboration in built environment education. Seven Higher- and Further- Education Institutions were represented, and 10 professional institutions. The purpose of the meeting was to hear examples of collaborative learning from others delivering construction education, and share experiences. Attendees also created a list of barriers and disincentives to extending collaborative learning practices, some of which are described below. The seminar was reported at the Innovation in Built Environment Education conference at the University of Bath in September 2015 (paper in preparation).

Several inspiring innovations in Learning and Teaching were shared at the Seminar. A surveyor from Leeds Beckett told us about the Project Office there set up by the School of Arts and Architecture, and his work with fourth year PM/QS students; we saw a year-wide project on risk from designers at ECA Edinburgh; collaborative projects in first and fourth year at Heriot-Watt University; and three superb initiatives working with partners outside HEIs: MERIT, Constructionarium, and Teambuild. The value of these projects to students and to industry was evidenced in positive feedback (example, (34)). It is probably no accident that the authors’ favourite memories of their education involve two of these three nationwide partnering activities.

Barriers and Disincentives to Collaborative Learning Practices

There is a lack of incentive for HEIs (universities) and research- driven professors to initiate interdisciplinary projects. They tend to be logistically complex: timetabling between courses and across schools. The challenge of setting realistic interdisciplinary problems requires generalist industry knowledge outwith the scope of many ‘career academics’ (35). As the projects straddle several budget streams, and possibly involve external partners or facilities, they tend to be extremely difficult

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to fund. Any project stepping outside the confines of the traditional university classroom may have H&S, risk and even PI insurance implications.

Assessing such projects in accordance with QAA procedures and institutional (‘-silo-ed’) criteria is especially problematic. Assessing the contribution of an individual to a technical task undertaken by a team is difficult, and will always be discipline-specific: skewed to the specialism most engaged by the particular task. For this reason it is difficult to grade the performance of different disciplines on different task against similar benchmarks, with any degree of accuracy. This, in particular, leads to interdisciplinary projects being removed from compulsory, credit-bearing courses and offered as optional or non-credit-bearing exercises.

Interdisciplinary projects in HEIs tend to be invented, initiated and run by dedicated pedagogues, teachers who see the learning benefit and emancipation of their students as reward enough for all the hard work. Often these educators have the practice-based experience to appreciate the true value of that learning: frequently they are academic/industry hybrids, possibly coming late to a role in education. The lack of funding and creditable output does not provide any incentive to these staff to innovate further, and Higher Education value metrics and reward processes (for example, the Research Excellence Framework process, 2014) tend not to place value in these activities in the same way as professional development or research-based activity is valued.

We must incentivise Universities and Colleges to provide this kind of education. The first step must be to articulate and demonstrate the undeniable value it has. There is a possibility that the mooted ‘TEF’ (Teaching Excellence Framework) (36) will encourage HEIs to place more value on the quality of teaching and learning experiences offered, and encourage activities linked with industry such as those noted above. However the onus cannot be on Government to provision our future professionals. It is the duty of Institutions to proactively promote, and through their accreditation procedures, require, increased cross-disciplinary and collaborative learning opportunities on HEI construction courses.

Current trends in Built Environment Professions

The proliferation of new and instant networks now made available by technology has vastly increased the possibilities for wider industry awareness and interaction amongst practicing professionals. It is now possible to make contact with another practitioner whose work you have read, seen published, or been recommended, with great ease through digital networks. These same channels allow you to find other like-minded individuals and connect ideas. A salient example is a group of young professionals growing up around the BIM2050 group: though never having met physically in one space, a series of introductions has led to a group of upwards of 30 leading young professionals from across the construction industry and associated fields, engaged in conversations online ranging from construction technology to the Internet of Things, to procurement innovation. It is energising to participate in this

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community. It may not have longevity in this form, but the ease with which this group can meet, effectively work together, and (if desired) disperse, is a new phenomenon.

This speed of ‘forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning’ (37) is facilitated by technology, but rehearses skills that are valuable in workplace project-based tasks. It can also be highly motivational, and assists in providing participants with a heightened sense of their professional context, in a short space of time. Traditional membership institution models struggle to provide this form of engagement through traditional social or networking events, which can have an inherited formality and hierarchy belying their c19th origins.

Inter-disciplinary conversations engendered an interest in the diversity within the BIM 2050 group, and members’ career paths to date. It quickly became clear that mono-professional careers were the exception rather than the norm. Several members held, successively or concurrently, memberships of up to four different construction institutions. Many members had taken employment which suggested a refocussing of their careers, and had re-trained in their early careers.

This observation led to a public mapping activity carried out at ‘Digital Construction Week’ over two days in October 2015. Visitors to the exhibition were invited to map their careers to date over a series of professional disciplines (= ‘silos’), running from top to bottom of the page, and including a greyed section at the base indicating ‘outside the construction industry’. The x-axis was a loose approximation of time. A red node indicated education or training, and a blue node, employment.

Figure 4 – Completing the Careers Mapping exercise with visitors

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Figure 5 – Completed Careers Mapping, Day 1 (Digitized)

Figure 6 – Completed Careers Mapping, Day 2 (Photograph)

The exercise revealed that many individuals had careers spanning an extraordinary diversity of roles. Admittedly the contributors were self-selecting, and were attending a digital-tech-focussed trade event, but the scale of cross-disciplinary movement recorded was extraordinary.

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The BIM2050 Group intends to develop this research in forthcoming projects, but the limited findings to date demonstrate the fallacy of modelling the construction industry workplace as a series of exclusive professional career paths, working together on individual projects and but each maintaining an exclusive professional identity. This model of ‘professionalism’, if ever accurate, is clearly not reflective now of the reality of working life in the built environment. Discipline-specific knowledge is valuable as a basis for practice; but must essentially be combined with inter-professional learning- as a means of connecting practitioners across disciplines through common language, models and modes of practice. A shared investment in broad-based disciplinary knowledge related to the meta- ‘built environment discipline’ – gained during compulsory education- may provide a sense of ‘occupational community’ (38) in future practice.

The experience of an individual professional in construction is extraordinarily varied, and difficult, if not impossible, to categorise into the traditional territory of any one institution. It is also clearly evident that mid-career retraining and education, (not only CPD but HEI-level technical courses) is a ‘normal’ part of many career paths. These realisations, if reflective of the wider industry, indicate an inherent incompatibility with the traditional models of an institution-based Chartered professional. They further underline the requirement for teaching and nurturing inter-disciplinary communication skills and team working. They raise a valid question of the possibility of holding shared criteria between professions, and the suggest exploring the transferability of accredited learning between professional ‘silos’.

Conclusions

The research contained in this paper was prompted by the 2015 Collaboration for Change report (1), calling on construction educators and institutions to revolutionise the way institutions and education interact between their traditional silos of operation. The investigation above evidences the value of inter-disciplinary collaboration in education, preparing students of construction disciplines in key professional skills that they will require as effective agents in the multidisciplinary construction industry, particularly in the advent of further digitisation and adoption of technology. It is the responsibility of professional education to provide students with structures for developing and practising these skills.

It has been argued that the ability to communicate between disciplines effectively is a key professional qualification for all built environment disciplines; as essential as the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, and relatively undervalued in the current offering of professional curricula in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The evidence collected above suggests that cross-disciplinary teaching within HEIs is not strategically supported by funding, research or academic pressures, and so suggests the compulsion to provide these learning opportunities within professional education must come from the accrediting institutions.

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Technological advances will mean increasingly complex pre-construction modelling, and immediate post-construction feedback; this speed and detail of response requires a very different approach to design and operation. In order to educate effectively, accredited chartership courses need to be at the forefront of technical advances, and actively engaging with real data and applied problems; likely only achievable through HEI partnerships direct with industry, and project information. As construction’s large contracting and consultancy firms become increasingly multidisciplinary, close pedagogic and research relationships with leading firms may assist HEIs in the provision of cross-disciplinary challenges and application of specialist knowledge.

The proliferation of data feedback will increase out of recognition in the next decade, as the Internet of Things (IoT) and supply-chain records digitise, and make available, previously hidden information. Professional and Educational institutions will no longer have a monopoly on data or knowledge, and so the ‘value’ of these institutions may reside wholly in expertise, and in accreditation/validation: possibly of individuals rather than of training schemes or courses, which are likely to be easily and freely accessible online.

We are slowly moving towards a more collaborative industry. A vehicle for this has been the government- directed adoption of BIM, and a framework for project teams to work together and focus on the operational outcomes, in the form of ‘Government Soft Landings’ (adopted from BSRIA’s framework). Some institutions have been quicker than others to adopt and promote these processes, but all disciplines need to more effectively inter-engage. The importance of this way of working needs to be reflected in professional education. To do this we must ensure integration of inter-professional learning within accreditation criteria, and seek to incentivise Universities and Colleges to provide this kind of learning.

The Integration of the operational phase of a building into the strategic communication framework required by BIM is essential to harness the benefits of this data availability, and to deliver the whole-life benefits on which this approach is predicated. Evidence collected here would indicate that current FM education is not engaging Facilities Managers in this debate, most specifically not communicating the underlying requirement that FM have a key role to plan in the planning, briefing, concept design, detailed design construction, commissioning and handover stages of a built asset. This misapprehension represents a serious barrier to effective industry practice. The effective, practical integration of FM in the design phase of construction needs to be promoted in industry education across the professional silos.

The outcomes from the DCW data from Careers Mapping Exercise revealed that people working in industry today are moving across disciplines, highlighting the value of transferable industry-wide acknowledged qualifications - an area which the authors feel is under-explored by the professional institutions. As working life duration extends, people will change careers more (intra- and inter- construction industry disciplines). We will potentially have four generations in the workplace. Continuous Learning is likely to dominate, and accreditation of learning may move to sit more equally between workplace and HEI-based delivery.

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In this future scenario, what is professionalism? The traditional structure of construction roles has both diversified and become more connected. In the near future, while education remains divided into individual roles and specialisms, individuals are likely to become even more likely to move between disciplines in the course of their extended careers, bringing their specialist knowledge of bear in a new area of professionalism. It is these specialist, trans-disciplinary professionals who will be required to innovate in the construction sector, to link up the pre-and post-construction stages, and to feed meaningful operational data into the design phase and vice-versa. They will be working in project-based multidisciplinary teams with tools not yet developed, exchanging complex information through sophisticated social and technical interfaces. Construction Institutions are not currently equipped to support this projected agile, fluid construction professional, and HEIs are not yet providing the best education to optimise the skills they will require in this workplace. Rapid evolution of the provision and accreditation of professional education in the built environment is essential to maintain relevance, and certainly to lead innovation, in the evolving construction industry.

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Acknowledgements The authors met and began collaborating as part of the Construction Industry Council (CIC) BIM 2050 Group. We thank the CIC for their foresight in bringing this cross-disciplinary group of young professionals together, and are indebted to our colleagues in the group for developing, through group communication, many of the ideas we present here.

Specific thanks also to the Council of Heads of Schools of the Built Environment (CHOBE), who funded the Seminar on Interdisciplinary Collaborative Learning in Built Environment Disciplines held at Heriot-Watt University in August 2015.

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