Teaching Transversal Competences In Civil Engineering Education

Abstract

In today's construction industry workflows, which require cross-disciplinary collaboration, transversal skills have become more important and the employee with such skills is more valuable in the labour market. The master's program in Construction Information Technology Engineering aims to train construction industry professionals with IT skills. Students will learn programming skills, IoT systems and databases for monitoring buildings and structures, artificial intelligence solutions and their use, building information modelling and energy efficiency, building constructions, -services and -electrics, and engineering numerical modelling. In addition to classroom teaching, students work in teams to complete project tasks, including a week-long exercise in Semester 2 where they equip an actual building with sensors, collect large amounts of data in a variety of formats over a long period of time, and spend the rest of the semester analyzing, processing and visualizing the data. The BME is a member of the EELISA university alliance whose main objective is to promote the education of European engineers. The masterprogram includes a 5 ECTS European Engineering Projectwork course where students spend a semester learning transversal skills, working in teams, project management tools, presentation techniques, business presentation, sales and investment skills. These skills are developed alongside the technical subjects and are applied in the context of them. The training includes an international hackathon where they participate in training and a competition with their international classmates at an EELISA partner institution. The masterprogram in this format is running with the 3rd cohort and the results are very positive; students have been able to find jobs in positions where they can apply what they have learnt in the training and several graduates have gone on to doctoral studies.