Managing construction

Volume 6 Number 7 July 12 - August 8 2010

Workerglyphic, Marco Luccio (2009), Drypoint on Velin Arches
Workerglyphic, Marco Luccio (2009), Drypoint on Velin Arches

David Scott talks to Professor Paolo Tombesi, Chair of Construction at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning about the future of construction and construction training in Australia.

“If ideas are important, we want to see them realised. For this to happen, we need to design an industry that is up to the task while making sure that our ambitions are also informed by the realities of our context.”

So began Professor Paolo Tombesi in his inaugural Professorial Lecture as the Chair of Construction at the University of Melbourne in October 2009. The former Fulbright Fellow from the University of California has spent a large part of his career both challenging preconceived ideas of the construction industry, and coming up with innovations, with research projects as diverse as investigating the future of digital outsourcing in construction to the innovation potential of iconic public buildings. It’s been a passion since he came to Australia as an undergraduate thesis student more than 25 years ago to study the impact of construction management on the design of the New Parliament House in Canberra.

“The introduction of technical change in the construction industry is a unique problem, socially and strategically” says Professor Tombesi. “We tend to deal with construction in bulk or as bulk rather than as a diverse family of distinctively structured and structurally different industrial organisms.

“Architectural experts talk about innovation almost morally, as something that ought to be done in principle and by principle, irrespective of its economic utility or constraints. Construction experts on the other hand seem to concentrate largely around the quantifiable relationships between investments and returns, using individual firms, or clusters thereof, as the cultural point of departure or arrival for most discussion about the logics of technical change.

“In both cases, I have the impression that, somehow, the broader picture that sees buildings as the tips of huge social icebergs, and building projects as critical catalysts for any modification to their internal structure or environmental behaviour, gets edited or simplified. Against all this, there seems to be very little distinction between construction markets, and relatively little value assigned to history, and the lessons that one can draw from others’ attempts at introducing change. Innovation is almost always discussed in the present.”

It is little wonder then, that ideas, construction management and the future direction of the construction industry will be front and centre this week as the Faculty plays host to the Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference (AUBEA). Now in its 35th iteration, the focus of this year’s conference is on the management of construction, as distinct from construction management, says Professor Tombesi.

“The theme is intentionally set out in the broadest possible way to incorporate any discipline that improves our ability to manage the industrial structure, the planning and production process, the distribution process, or the output of building.

“There are different ways and scales for managing the construction industry, and that discussion about their integration should be facilitated. I guess the reasons and the challenges are before everyone’s eyes, given the details and dynamics of the roll-out of the economic stimulus-related government construction programs.”

Besides an examination of how construction and management can be paired, the conference will take a strong focus on construction education, particularly on what could be the preferred curricula for the local industry and what kinds of teachers and researchers should be involved.

Professor Tombesi says such questions are critical for tertiary educators across Australia, as the dynamics of the industry combined with the ongoing restructure of building courses raises significant issues regarding the nature of education on offer, the market for it, and the role of education providers.

“The relationship between construction and higher education has always been a complex one because it has to blend vocational and professional training – that is, the ‘what and how’ with the ‘what and why’. On one hand, construction graduates need to build enough technical skills to enable them to enter the job market as is. On the other, university education should also be about constructing a future that may look different from the present. This means that construction graduates should value not only their immediate ability to blend in but also their ability to discern evolving trends, pass judgment and, if necessary, move away from accepted practices. In other words, be instrumental in change.”

From this point of view, the higher education landscape for construction in Australia is quite heterogeneous; at one end, it starts with vocational, almost trade-based training while at the other end it engages directly with industry-wide or corporate issues that are quite a bit removed from the typical building site.

It’s a balance the University is trying to achieve, says Professor Tombesi. “We have always strived to produce well-rounded graduates capable to connect with the various dimensions of construction, but it may be appropriate to say that, in the wake of the Melbourne Model, we have started to focus more and more on the higher end of the industry in terms of management responsibilities.

“With our new and evolving graduate program in Construction Management, our aim is to contribute to the generation of a selected class of construction professionals capable to deal with complex development issues, policy making, technological change, and industrial entrepreneurship.“

The 35th AUBEA conference runs from July 14 to July 16 at the University of Melbourne Parkville Campus.

http://www.msd.unimelb.edu.au/events/conferences/aubea2010/