Education and Industry: The Balancing Act

Quantity Surveying students are required to study a vast spectrum of modules during their programme of study. Perhaps one of the most important taught modules on a Quantity Surveying programme and a core professional competency relates to building measurement. Many early stage quantity surveying students are introduced to building measurement via the concept of manual take-off which offers students a good grounding in the basic skills and good practices required to successfully measure a building project. However, manual measurement ultimately is no longer used in practice in any meaningful capacity and teaching it is a time-consuming process. The research explores how the positive aspects of manual measurement can be extracted and delivered to students through more industry aligned means. Qualitative action research using a collaborative research model via participatory focus groups and interviews comprehensively analysed the topic, providing findings which indicate that a pedagogical shift is required to incorporate longstanding best practice principals in modern technology in order to complete the balancing act that exists in aligning education and industry.