A microcosm of the engineering world

Concrete, Apr 2007 by Ahearn, Alison, Holdsworth, Robin

The need for construction engineering students to gain greater practical knowledge has led to the development of a permanent 'Constructionarium' in Norfolk - a real-life site experience in which students can act all project roles.

Asking 'why do students love the Constructionarium?' is like asking 'why do so many people clamour to run the London marathon?' Conquering a real, physical challenge seems to be more central to the success of the Constructionarium than was originally envisaged.

Engineers' instinctive reaction to the Constructionarium is that it must be right to give students a dose of engineering reality on site, making sense of their theoretical knowledge and harnessing it to the sheer physicality of real engineering. However, students report much more than 'a better understanding of engineering'. Like those who finish fun runs and marathons, students talk about personal challenges, facing up to a physical reality, beating the clock, using their training, enormous personal satisfaction and being one of the few who can say 'I did it'. Measuring themselves with a site-scale result is a novelty for students more used to tackling abstract problems on paper or doing lab-scale practicals.

A recent evaluation study(1) by Luz Gutierrez of Westminster University has brought out some of these issues, which are relevant to anyone in the concrete industry who wants to know how to reach engineering students, inspire them and get them to stay in the industry after graduation.

Discussion of the impact of construction begs the question 'what is a Constructionarium?' As an aquarium is a microcosm of the aquatic world, so the Constructionarium is a microcosm of the engineering world.

Partnership

A three-way partnership of supervisors runs each event: contractor, consulting engineer and university. This model arose when John Doyle Construction took up Professor Chris Wise's challenge for industry to not only support but also change the student experience. Chris, then a part-time professor at Imperial College as well as a director of design engineer Expedition Engineering, proposed a real-life experience in which the students could act in all roles on site, from chartered engineer, project manager down to general operative.

The first event was held on borrowed land in west London in 2003, with the help of Imperial organising the students' and university contribution. Fortunately, the CITB offered land in Norfolk for a long-term home and, in 2004, the event moved to the National Construction College East. In 2006, the East of England Development Agency funded infrastructure development of the site to make it a sustainable facility for any university to use.

By 2006, at least five universities were forming partnerships. Forty academics, contractors and design engineers attended a workshop at Imperial on how to set up their own Constructionarium. Evaluations, informally conducted each year, had indicated that the idea worked and was beneficial. Just as medical students have to gain experience in hospitals, with the chance to take responsibilities, so engineering students have to gain experience on-site with responsibilities - the industry reaction was 'it must be right'. Nevertheless, a formal evaluation study was needed.

Luz Guiterrez, studying sociology at Westminster University, had experience of evaluating student-led construction projects in the developing world. Her study for Constructionarium Ltd showed that there is considerably more to the Constructionarium than the obvious advantage of enhanced engineering knowledge.

It seems that it is a 'rite of passage': students move from a perception of themselves as mere students belonging to the engineering fraternity. Working alongside real engineers and operatives from industry, on their own site, making decisions as teams and via team leaders, the students carve out an identity for themselves as engineers. Their pride in what they have constructed is patent on their last day. In 2006, Imperial's students had this amplified when Prince Philip asked to see their work in his role as Senior Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He saw a 21m Millau Bridge, a 20-tonne oil rig, an asymmetric 6m canopy over a tube station entrance and a 25m pier over a deep lake - significantly large structures for a five-day work schedule.

The statistics of most interest to the industry will be the pre-Constructionarium versus post-Constructionarium career choices of students. In short, the number of students at the end of their third year of university who still did not know what career they wanted was 33% before the Constructionarium. After the Constructionarium, a snapshot survey of half the class showed that that figure had fallen to 10%, the number of students intending to stay in the industry rising from 57% to 85%.

Making Constructionarium work at national level still needs significant input and support from industry. Suppliers would make a huge difference to the feasibility of these events if they could donate materials and send someone with real site experience to help students understand the realities of the material on site. For the concrete industry, there is an obvious advantage in promoting concrete structures as well as inspiring students to choose concrete science subjects in the rest of their degrees.