More private-sector help is needed for college CM programs to meet the industry’s growing demand
By Tom Nicholson
Hit hard by a dearth of managers, contractors are banking on the growing crop of young construction management graduates to help fill their leadership ranks.
Courtesy of Iowa State University
While it’s been said that “if you build it, they will come,” contractors today are more apt to subscribe to the mantra: “If they come, we can build it.”
Even though they have enjoyed record-breaking revenue and an enormous demand for their services for several years, contractors are desperately in need of qualified people. Although they are troubled about the decline of skilled craftspeople, many contractors say they lose even more sleep over the availability of project managers—people with the high degree of education and skills required to lead complex projects.
But progress is being made. Mike Holland, executive vice president for San Antonio-based American Council for Construction Education, which accredits 65 to 70 four-year construction management bachelor-degree programs at colleges and universities in the U.S., says about 16,000 students enroll in construction management programs each year.
These programs produce about 3,300 construction management graduates a year, compared to 425 CM graduates a year in the 1970s, but that number of graduates meets only about half of the positions the industry needs filled, Holland says.
CM programs “are growing because the industry is seeing the value of education,” Holland says. “They’ve bought into it in a large scale. There is 100% job placement for graduates in this field, and companies are finding creative ways to attract these students even before they graduate.”
Industry Sponsorships
A growing number of contractors are sponsoring school programs and helping fund program expansions. Colleges and universities that supply the demand for construction managers are eager to expand to meet the new needs of the industry, but they can’t do that unless the industry helps them, says Frank Bruckner, a recruiter at Asheville, N.C.-based construction recruiting company Kimmel and Associates.
Bruckner has had his finger on the pulse of the industry’s need for managers for more than three decades and says the emphasis on higher education has “changed 180 degrees” in that time.
Jobsite tours for high school students and industry-supported, hands-on construction career days are helping to drive interest in CM programs across the country.
Photo courtesy of Iowa State University
A number of factors contribute to the managerial dearth, Bruckner says. He does 1,100 searches a year for senior-level managers to fill voids at contracting companies across the nation. “The industry has exploded, and at the same time, the baby-boom generation is retiring,” he says.
The industry’s prosperity, it seems, is also one of its most serious threats. “It used to be that the industry worked on a three- to four-year cycle,” Bruckner says. “Business would expand and contract, and so there were always abundant managers available. But for the last five years, the industry has been expanding without any contraction, and the effects are now being seen in a lack of managers. This is the central issue in construction today.”
Educators at colleges and universities that have four-year construction management programs say the industry has to step up to the plate to solve this problem by sponsoring the schools so that they can expand their programs to meet contractors’ hunger for managers.
Of the approximately 70 to 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. that offer bachelor’s degrees in construction management, only about 10 of them are benefiting from significant industry sponsorship, Bruckner says. “That has to change,” he adds.
For example, Bruckner’s firm last year committed to donate nearly $7 million over a seven-year period to Western Carolina University’s construction management program, an amount boosted by the state of North Carolina’s donation of an additional $3 million. The school in turn has renamed its construction education program The Kimmel and Associates School of Construction Management and Technology.
“That’s the only way to solve this problem: the industry has to do it,” says Craig Capano, construction program director at WCU. “We need a partnership with industry, like what we’ve done with Kimmel, to fix this.”
Seven years ago, when WCU started offering a bachelor’s degree in construction management, it graduated four students. “Now we have 310 undergraduate students in the program, as well as 40 graduate students in our graduate program,” Capano says. “We are breaking at the seams. That is what can be done with help from the industry.”
Other Programs
Another example of industry sponsorship is the Del E. Webb School of Construction at Arizona State University, which is set to undergo a major expansion beginning this summer. The project is contingent on approval of a $20-million grant from the state to go with approximately $10 million donated through a host of industry representatives, contractors and philanthropists.
Iowa State University’s Geotechnical Mobile Lab, a laboratory on wheels donated to the school by Des Moines-based McAninch Construction, is an example of the industry’s involvement in academia.
Courtesy of Iowa State University
The project’s funding is still being pushed through state legislative channels, but there is broad support for the program and the project is expected to get the green light any day now, says Matthew Eichen, manager of industry relations at the school. The school’s construction management program, named after the developer/philanthropist who donated a $4-million endowment to the school in 1992, has existed for 50 years and currently has about 500 students enrolled.
“We expect that to double in the next 10 years,” Eichen says. “We have had tremendous growth in this state, and we aren’t meeting the industry’s demand for construction managers.”
Eichen cites a 2005 Bureau of Labor Statistics study that said Arizona needs about 740 more construction managers each year to keep pace with the state’s rocketing growth. “We aren’t even meeting 20% of the need at this time,” he adds. “It’s time to kick it in gear.”
School officials are currently developing, in conjunction with a construction industry advisory council, a five-year strategic plan that will transform the school into the first fully autonomous entity within ASU.
In California, industry donations have helped California Polytechnic State University begin construction on a building to house what will be the state’s largest construction management program at its California Center for Construction Excellence in San Luis Obispo.
Started last year, the $25.4-million, 46,000-sq-ft building, will be completed in 2008.
“In the last five years, the number of students in the CM program has increased 50%,” says Al Hauck, head of Cal Poly’s construction management department. “We now have 400 CM majors enrolled and expect that to increase another 10% to 20% when the new school opens.”
Hauck says the new building is designed to foster an innovative “integrated curriculum” that Cal Poly professors are creating. Instead of the traditional course-by-course approach to construction management education, Cal Poly professors are developing an integrated approach in which studies focus on teaching the specialized skill sets required in different industry segments, such as commercial or residential building.
Hauck says about $6 million in donations for the building have come from contractors. “If it wasn’t for private donations from within the industry, we would not be able to do this,” he says.
Schools also are offering more immediate incentives to coax industry sponsorship of programs. At South Carolina’s Clemson University, Roger Liska, professor and chairman of the Dept. of Construction Science and Management, says contractors who sponsor the school’s master-degree program can tap graduate students for 10 hours each week to conduct construction-related research.
“It’s a two-sided coin,” Liska says. “The contractors not only get the research they need, but we send them back quality graduates already familiar with their company.”
Liska says there are about 13 contractors, both local and national companies, each of which donates $125,000 annually to the school’s construction education programs. Donors also can commit to smaller sums through the Corporate Partner Program, which stipulates a $5,000 donation over three years. “The contractors are involved in our programs,” Liska says. “What we are doing is nurturing relationships between contractors and students.”
Graduate programs in construction, while much less in demand in the industry, are slowly gaining momentum at colleges and universities. But there are mixed opinions about whether they’re needed, except to train professors to teach the growing crop of construction students.
“In 30 years, I have never had a contractor ask me to find someone with a master’s [degree],” Bruckner says. “They want people with a bachelor’s degree in construction management. They want someone with business skills, basic engineering skills and the ability to run a project, but they don’t see advanced degrees as necessary.”
But directors of construction management programs say they see a severe shortage of professors with PhDs or master’s degrees as one of the biggest hurdles in expanding programs. “We can’t find enough professors,” Capano says. “It’s not easy to find people with PhDs and also field experience.”
Allison Brotman, senior director of professional development at the Associated General Contractors of America, says there is rising demand in the construction industry for advanced degrees and training—and not just in academia. The industry is “craving advanced educational opportunities,” she says, noting AGC’s endorsement of graduate-degree programs in construction at Iowa State University, Clemson University, Purdue University and jointly offered programs at Northern Arizona University/Arizona State University.
AGC is addressing the demand for advanced educational opportunities in the industry by hosting two five-day advanced management programs this year: the Advanced Management Program at Dallas in November and the Construction Project Manager Course in Portland, Ore, in October and Dallas in December. In the programs, contractors benefit from peer-to-peer learning and sharing of best practices.
Some people “may have been a manager for years, but there are always new scenarios,” Brotman says.
Capano says that as the construction industry continues to grow, so must educational programs. “At this point, there are no colleges of construction management,” he adds. “That’s where we are suffering. There are schools for engineering and architecture, but in the future there will need to be colleges devoted solely to construction management.”
Distance Learning 101
With the advent of distance-learning education, several online programs now allow constructors to hone their skills or pursue advanced degrees while in the field. Online programs are most commonly designed around graduate degrees, since undergraduate studies rely heavily on face-to-face interactions and training that can happen only in the classroom, lab or field, educators say. But graduate students, many of whom have already started their careers in the industry, like the convenience of online programs.
“What we see, in many cases, is that the people who take online classes are midcareer employees,” says Roger Liska, professor and chairman of the Dept. of Construction Science and Management at Clemson University, which currently has about 15 graduate students enrolled in advanced-degree programs in construction via its distance-learning program. “We also see a lot of people who have degrees in other fields and are either working in construction now or they want to change career paths.”
Distance education comes in several variations, with some schools conducting classes entirely through online modules, with message boards and e-mail replacing traditional classroom lectures, discussions and classroom attendance. Professors assign lessons through e-mail or Web-based delivery systems, and students return their assignments by e-mail or course-specific message boards that allow other students to respond and comment like an in-classroom discussion.
Other schools provide recordings of actual classroom sessions that are mailed to students. Some colleges use a combination of strategies, where students do the bulk of coursework online but are required to visit campus periodically throughout the program for in-person meetings, testing or labs.
Mike Holland, executive vice president for the American Council for Construction Education in San Antonio, cautions prospective distance-learning students not to sacrifice academic credibility for convenience. “There are online programs that are not legitimate,” Holland says. “Make sure to look at schools that are accredited by one of the three accrediting agencies.”
Engineering and construction programs are accredited by American Council for Construction Education, Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the National Association of Industrial Technology.
It doesn’t work as well with undergraduate studies,” says Liska. “Online programs mostly are targeting people who work full-time jobs during the day and need to expand their educations, but the last chapter has not been written on distance learning.”
AGC Program Endorsements
These days, it is common for project managers and construction professionals, much like their architect and engineering counterparts, to have bachelor’s degrees. But now, the industry is developing a hunger for managers with master’s degrees.
“Construction professionals are craving advanced-degree opportunities,” says Allison Brotman, senior director of professional development at Associated General Contractors of America. “We’ve recognized that need and are doing what we can to help industry professionals find continuing education opportunities.”
The lack of overall awareness and information about industry-specific advanced-degree opportunities for construction professionals is something AGC has set out to change. In addition to hosting non-degree continuing education programs for contractors, AGC is also giving the thumbs-up to four graduate programs at five selected schools. Programs at Iowa State University, Clemson University, Purdue University and jointly offered programs at Northern Arizona University/Arizona State University, are officially endorsed by AGC.
“Endorsement means that a committee of AGC contractors and industry experts have reviewed the curriculum and other aspects of the graduate programs and agreed they are quality programs,” Brotman says.
AGC’s endorsement gives brand-name credibility for many in the industry. “It allows the schools to use the AGC brand in their marketing and recruiting efforts,” Brotman says.
AGC considered several factors in determining program endorsements, including the experience of faculty and the alternative delivery methods available for students. Faculty experience in the field allows professors to relay to students “not just the science of a construction principle but also the art of how to apply that construction principle,” Brotman says.
Alternative delivery of programs is also a key consideration AGC uses to determine endorsements. In many cases, graduate students are already full-time employees, so postgraduate programs have to be made available in non-traditional forms such as distance learning or weekend and evening classes.
AGC selected the four programs from a group of 20 through an RFP process. Schools were asked to submit details of their programs for AGC review. AGC is committed to reviewing and supporting advanced-degree educational opportunities in the industry. In fact, this summer, AGC will again send out a call to colleges and universities around the nation that offer advanced-degree educational programs in construction and want to be considered for AGC endorsement.
