MSc / PG Dip Quantity Surveying
In the rapidly changing world of international higher education there’s a growing demand for high quality, flexible, qualifications that meet the needs of busy professionals, many of whom are in careers with very different characteristics than when they first qualified. Our School of the Built Environment (SoBE) is responding to this trend with professional Masters Programmes for those working across the construction industry.
For those working away from conventional university facilities, we will support these programmes through international hubs, where we can match on-line provision with intense, face-to-face sessions with “flying faculty”. Rather than the more formal and conventional facilities of branch campuses, international hubs offer efficient, flexible facilities that can be adapted to changing needs. After all, many are mastering subjects that weren’t invented when they first qualified; who knows what needs will be a decade from now?
One such centre opened two years ago, when we launched our partnership with the Colombo School of Construction Technology in Pitakotte, in the outskirts of the city. Sri Lanka’s economy is growing at a steady 7 to 7.5 per cent per annum, resulting in heavy demands on the construction industry for houses, industrial plant and infrastructure. This, in turn brings jobs – badly needed in a country where some 20 percent of the population is below the widely used poverty line of $2 a day.
At the beginning of September we began offering our accredited MSc in Quantity Surveying in partnership with CSCT. As with our existing Surveying that we’ve offered in Colombo for the last two years, the Masters is the same programme that we offer from our Salford campus. Our “flying faculty” – SoBE’s Gerald Wood and Song Wu in this case – spend eight intensive days with our students in Colombo, and then continue support on line until it’s time for the next immersion.
I took the opportunity of talking to students from the inaugural class at the launch event we held in Colombo. They work in a range of countries – Sri Lanka of course, but also Indonesia and Qatar – and usually have extensive work experience in the construction industry. This allows for Kolb’s classic experiential learning cycle – periods of work experience interspersed with study, developing the “reflective practitioner” who gains personally while making a substantial contribution to their workplace.
Darshani Amarabandhu, who has signed up for our postgraduate degree programme after 20 years experience as a quantity surveyor, sees this as the opportunity for a step change in her professional life. She talks about how much her profession has changed, and is still changing. She anticipates that, by studying for her Masters, she’ll be in a position to apply a new range of high-level skills.
Bingunath Ingirige, our programme leader for postgraduate Quantity Surveying, stresses how important it is for students’ ambitions to be aligned with the objectives of employers.
This came home during the seminar that marked our Sri Lankan programme launch. Our guest speaker was Dr Mervyn Gunasekara, President of the Managers. Along with other leaders in the country’s construction industry, he talked about the lack of high-level skills that was threatening to derail economic expansion. For example, the tourist industry has grown significantly since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009. Tourism can create a large number of direct and indirect local job opportunities. But without the capacity to build new hotels and resorts, and their accompanying infrastructure, economic growth will not be realized. And that, in turn, could result in a resurgence of conflict.
http://www.corporate.salford.ac.uk/leadership-management/martin-hall/blog/