Academia and industry working together for a collaborative future

This conference, on 20 June 2013, at BRE near Watford, is being developed with colleagues in Constructing Excellence, BRE, the wider CE movement, and people from universities involved with built environment and related disciplines.

The CE Movement has strong formal and informal links with universities, and visa versa. The value that all parties get from this relationship could be greater. We therefore consider that a conference to discuss each other’s agenda would be valuable.

The objective is to bring together people from the higher education (HE) sector with the CE Movement and BRE to discuss issues of mutual interest including research priorities, curriculum content, graduate employment, and engagement, enterprise and impact with industry, and develop a SMART action plan to work together for mutual benefit. How can we best support each others’ aspirations?

Key HE drivers include the methodical generation of new knowledge, esteem, accreditation by professional institutions, and research council funding with a focus on outcomes/impact not just outputs. Benefit for Constructing Excellence and its members include access to ideas, innovation, inspiration, challenges to conventional wisdom, and outreach to the best students.

One outcome of the summit may be an agreed joint vision along the following lines:

“The vision is of a future culture of innovation in the sector, realised in a ready interchange of access, knowledge and ideas for and from university research, modern fit-for-purpose curriculum content focused on leading edge thinking, and a quality pool of graduate talent for the industry.”

Practical outcomes may include stronger relationships between individual members and universities, analysis of Constructing Excellence data from KPIs and demonstrations, intranet access for all students and faculty to the Constructing Excellence library of members’ content, and engagement of Constructing Excellence members in influencing and delivering curriculum content. Success would also be a desire by participants for the event to become annual.

If you are interested in attending, please email Don Ward at Constructing Excellence: don.ward@constructingexcellence.org.uk