The acquisition of knowledge and expertise in construction: Understanding construction professionals

Education programs these days, including Construction Management, have been designed to response to market and stakeholder needs. However, there still exists a need for education providers to understand how construction practitioners develop their expertise. Understanding how expertise develops is essential to enable them to develop programs to establish the foundations on which new professionals can better develop their appropriate expertise. Building on earlier research and further explores how expertise develops in construction professionals. It also explores the similarities and differences in development of that expertise in construction practitioners from the perspective of knowledge from various regions, which includes Thailand, Australia and Ireland, through the use of interviews with active and experienced construction professionals.Previous research undertaken in Australia and Thailand has shown construction expertise derives both systematically and often for some professionals in an ad hoc manner from various forms of knowledge, either or both from authoritative and non-authoritative knowledge sources. These forms of knowledge are constrained deliberately and politically by accreditation bodies, government authorities and by the market. Additional interviews in Ireland, following analysis, shows that a similar position pertains where the actors develop their knowledge through individual learning and practice. Some of this learning attained through authoritative sources was proffered as very important. However, an emphasis on the non-authoritative and 'learning by doing' approach offers much to the expertise of the AEC practitioner.To understand how construction practitioners' gain and use knowledge in their career can offer further extension to theorising about expertise in construction and through active application of this knowledge in courses and programs, enabling productive communication between industry and academia. AEC graduates in the future will need to be highly technical, adaptable, collaborative, good communicators and lifelong learners. The goal of creating educational experiences that address these competences provides the modern academic with many challenges and those in industry have much to contribute to making this challenge more focused and appropriate.