https://doi.org/10.24928/2022/0222

Building Interdisciplinary Teams Through Student Design Competitions: A Case Study

Pooria Golestanirad¹, Zofia K. Rybkowski², Manish Dixit³ & Gregory A. Luhan⁴

¹ Graduate Student, Dept. of Construction Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, orcid.org/ 0000-0002-6871-2608
²Associate Professor, Dept. of Construction Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, o: 979-845-4354, [email protected], orcid.org/ 0000-0002-0683-5004
³Associate Professor, Dept. of Construction Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, orcid.org/ 0000-0001-8622-8388
⁴Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, orcid.org/ 0000- 0002-1568-3866

Abstract

The owner, architecture, engineering, and construction (OAEC) industries have grown increasingly complex, necessitating improvements to both design and construction procedures—requiring increased collaboration among all lean stakeholders. However, universities are often criticized for not developing essential, generic skills in their graduates, especially the ability to work collaboratively in teams. Attempting to better prepare students, academic institutions are creating vehicles to help their students acquire effective teamwork skills. Competitions, for example, have spread to almost every discipline, including the OAEC-related ones, since they have much to offer students of the built environment. The researchers assessed the participants’ experience of an interdisciplinary design competition to determine if such competitions are an effective means to impart teamwork skills to future collaborative stakeholders of the built environment. Additionally, this research aimed to identify areas where educators should prioritize their efforts to better prepare students for enhanced teamwork performance. In addition to highlighting that teams should be appropriately composed of members with critical, needed skill sets, results from a post-event survey of the case study competition also suggest there is a need to teach students how to develop clear and shared goals, develop clear and understandable roles, and communicate more effectively when working in teams.

Keywords

Teamwork, collaboration, OAEC / AECO, interdisciplinary competition, Lean Integrated Product Delivery / Lean IPD

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Reference

Golestanirad, P. , Rybkowski, Z. K. , Dixit, M. & Luhan, G. A. 2022. Building Interdisciplinary Teams Through Student Design Competitions: A Case Study, Proc. 30th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) , 1123-1133. doi.org/10.24928/2022/0222

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