Collaborative multidisciplinary learning: Quantity surveying students’ perspectives

Abstract

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of quantity surveying (QS) programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multidisciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multidisciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas in which a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a Project Contributor or as a Project Leader), despite the need for change instigated by the multidisciplinary revolution in building information modelling (BIM) education. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students’ technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery.