Green by degrees

Paul murray joined The University of Plymouth in 1992 to launch its construction programme, but with 60 others in the country at the time, he was keen to bring something different. Coming from the construction industry, and well versed in environmental issues, he knew that sustainability could be the right thing.

“Right from the outset we were looking 10 years ahead,” says Murray, now principle lecturer at the university. “We wanted to focus on things that weren’t going to go away.”

What clinched it was the fact that the Building Research Establishment (BRE) was researching similar themes. Also, a colleague who joined around the same time, Steve Goodhew (now department head), was addressing sustainability issues in CIOB committees. Murray himself was doing the same at the RICS. They suspected they were on to a burgeoning trend that would eventually shift industry values in a more profound way.

They also surveyed more than 200 employers, receiving a hugely positive reaction. The majority of respondents indicated they would look favourably on a degree with “environment” in the title, as long as “construction” stayed.

The result, in 1996, were the UK’s only environmentally themed construction degrees. The CIOB accredits both courses: Building Surveying and the Environment, and Construction Management and the Environment.

Global warming

Murray and Goodhew decided to create specific modules in each year, covering topics such as energy scarcity, global warming, biodiversity and environmental building practices. But they also overlaid an environmental context to standard construction modules so that in domestic building technology, for example, students learned about eco-housing, and in development management they covered environmental impact assessments. By 2005 more than 80% of modules included aspects related to sustainability.

Academic staff all have specific environmental expertise and all except one have published in related fields, such as thermal performance of buildings, energy efficient refurbishment, lean construction, sustainability, values in construction education and the environmental impact of materials.

But should sustainability be taught at this stage when students have so many other skills to learn? Is it not simpler to let graduates absorb it on the job — up to a point that employers judge helpful for the business?

Murray is adamant: “It is essential to provide the base level of knowledge and skills at undergraduate level,” he says. “In many cases employers may not have the detailed knowledge, and CPD provision is sporadic.”

Murray adds that there is “overwhelming evidence” that sustainability will frame the future of construction education. No less a body than the United Nations, for example, declared the period 2005-2015 as The Decade for Education for Sustainable Development. In the UK the government set sustainable education policies for four separate departments (Department for Education and Skills, DEFRA, DTI and the now defunct ODPM). The UK’s official published strategy – Delivering UK’s Sustainable Development Strategy – emphasises the need “to make sustainability literacy a core competency for professional graduates”.

The CIOB seems to support this view in its new accreditation criteria. It has been revising its Education Framework to ensure parity with industry standards, and areas such as the design and use of sustainable construction have been embedded into the learning structure. These revisions are due to be approved in the autumn.

Murray believes the future of the planet depends on new waves of construction professionals having a good grounding in the subject because construction worldwide has immense environmental and social impacts. It is one of the most wasteful industries on earth: responsible for 40% of all resource consumption and produces 40% of all waste, and in the UK accounts for nearly half of all energy use.

From the students point of view, are these qualifications resulting in better job prospects when they leave university?

Murray admits some final-year students have concerns about feeling out of place, but says 90% of graduates are employed within six months of graduating, and reiterates that their core competency is still construction management.

From the outset we were looking 10 years ahead. We wanted to focus on things that were not going to go away

Paul Murray, University of Plymouth

“It’s more about equipping them for making a difference when they can,” he says. “What we do is a theme. It’s an added value. For organisations already thinking along those lines, say, a housing association, they bring that extra awareness.

“Our aim is to give them skills they can call on later in life. Some of them are technical, like working a thermal camera, or soil remediation techniques.”

Global issues

“As industry moves in the direction – because it’s forced to – they’ll fit. Actually the industry is catching up now.”

Murray and Goodhew now want their students to start thinking about global social and economic issues as well. They tested the water at the end of this academic year by holding a suite of workshops in which students explored fundamental problems like deforestation, poverty and economic injustice. Although voluntary, the sessions attracted 30% of the enrolled population — not bad considering they were in the evening, and lasted five hours.

The success of Murray’s vision can be measured in terms of the number of students who are now enrolling on the programmes. In 1998 around 30 enrolled, last year the figure was 54.

Evidence also suggests the degrees are also succeeding in terms of awareness and learning. In a national survey in 2003 on the environmental awareness of construction students across the UK, Plymouth students demonstrated higher awareness than the national average.

Anecdotal evidence suggests further that an academic grounding in environmental issues boosts at least some students’ career prospects.

“We received an unsolicited email from one of our graduates a few months ago asking us to make clear to students that sustainability and environment issues now rank as important to clients as any other measure,” Murray says. Another graduate attracted the attention of a large developer because of his grounding in sustainability.

The Plymouth approach also appears to have had an affect on other universities. In 2003 Murray and his team published flexible learning materials and guidance on sustainability, which were taken up by 81 lecturers in 40 universities. Closer to home Murray’s colleagues across the hall in the civil and mechanical engineering schools have asked his team to help them embed sustainability in their programmes.

Fellowship award

If any further endorsement was needed of sustainability as a serious subject, it came last year in the form of a £4.5m grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England for the new Centre for Sustainable Futures, a cross-university Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, of which Plymouth is a core member.

Also in 2005, Murray himself won a £50,000 National Teaching Fellowship Award for his proven contribution to excellence in higher education.

Did he rush out and buy a new Jag? Not surprisingly, he didn’t. The money has gone back into the programmes, to pay for materials for the evening workshops, to allow faculty to attend conferences and to help him write a book.

“I wouldn’t be buying a Jag anyway, would I?” he said. “It’d have to be a bike.”