Preparedness For Work in Civil Construction: A Time-On-Task Study

Research Paper Recommended citation: McLarty, J., & Goldfinch, T. (2025). Preparedness For Work in Civil Construction: A Time-On-Task Study. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631871. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. PREPAREDNESS FOR WORK IN CIVIL CONSTRUCTION: A TIMEON-TASK STUDY J McLarty a, T Goldfinch b1 a University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia b University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 0000-0001-5506-136X Conference Key Areas: Engineering skills, professional skills, and transversal skills; Quality assurance and accreditation of engineering educational programs Keywords: Interdisciplinarity, industry practice ABSTRACT The importance of graduate preparedness for the engineering workplace is frequently discussed, but quantitative studies of how graduate engineers operate outside their core discipline of training are limited. This paper reports on a pilot survey study of task-time allocation conducted in partnership with a top-tier construction company in an Australian context. 15 junior engineers (<5 years in industry) and 3 mid-level engineers (approximately 10 years’ experience) reported on time-on-tasks over a 3-week period. It was found that participants spent most of their time on work classed as outside their discipline of qualification, using skills learned mostly after graduation. The junior engineers within the case study company reported feeling well prepared for the technical design elements of their role, but underprepared in terms of delivery of solutions such as construction methodologies, contracts, and sequencing and scheduling. Since participants were engineers working in engineering roles aligned with their discipline of qualification, the results provide support for reframing of graduate skills in civil engineering. They also support the need for more explicit training in how other specialists and professions contribute to the delivery of engineering projects. The findings add to existing studies on what engineers do and may benefit graduates in their transition to work in the construction industry as well as the construction companies they work for by providing a clearer picture of how much time junior engineers spend doing ‘engineering’ and support that may be needed in other aspects of their work. 1 Corresponding Author T Goldfinch [email protected] 1 INTRODUCTION It is well known that engineers often work outside of their original disciplinary training (Richter & Paretti, 2009; Palmer et al., 2015), and engineering education being framed in a broader interdisciplinary context goes back several decades (Finiston, 1980; King, 1988). However, there is a disconnect between this reality and the preparation that engineering students receive at university, with minimal interdisciplinary education in typical Bachelor of Engineering programs (Crosthwaite, 2019; Hadgraft & Kolmos, 2020). Some argue that taking a proactive approach to training engineers in skill areas outside their core discipline is vital because engineers will be required to integrate knowledge and understanding from various disciplines to manage the complexity of contemporary societal challenges (Van den Beemt et al., 2020). Hadgraft and Kolmos (2020) identified key challenges facing current engineering graduates as building their employability skills and performing their work in the context of both sustainability and the fourth industrial revolution, which both require engineering graduates to be able to apply systems thinking and operate in complex, interdisciplinary environments. However, it has been countered that this capability can be learned in the workplace post-graduation, and that the scope of university education should remain focused on key fundamental concepts and skills in a monodisciplinary environment (Jones, 2010; Misiewicz, 2016; Spinks et al., 2007). Except for the work by Trevelyan (2014), much of the literature lacks quantification regarding what balance is needed in curricula and how much time new engineers spend working outside their core training. Therefore, the primary purpose for this study was to capture such data; in this instance focusing on the Australian construction sector. To address this gap, this small-scale undergraduate Honours research study sought to quantify time-on task of junior engineers to address the question: How does interdisciplinarity impact graduate engineers’ day-to-day work and their preparation for industry practice? 2 METHOD Framing this study was a definition of interdisciplinarity identified through a synthesis of recent research on Interdisciplinary Engineering Education (IEE) (Van den Beemt et al., 2020), which defined ‘interdisciplinary’ as work involving some level of integration between disciplines (Huutoniemi et al., 2010). This is distinct from multidisciplinary work, which is where a phenomenon is addressed from multiple perspectives in a separate manner (Borrego & Newswander, 2008). Therefore, the study presented here sought to explore examples of graduates doing work they classified as outside their discipline of qualification, and spanning disciplines in an integrated way. An online pilot survey gathered data on junior site-based engineers from a Tier 1 civil construction company operating in Australia, specialising in significant infrastructure projects. The research was approved by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (approval number 2021/557). An arm’s length recruitment approach was adopted for the survey, which involved an engineering manager sending the recruitment email as well as the subsequent links to the surveys for the three weeks. The initial email sent was sent to approximately 52 people who met the inclusion criteria. The bespoke online survey was built upon Trevelyan’s (2014) study of the breakdown of how engineers spend their time. It asked engineers within 5 years of graduating what percentage of their time they spent doing work that they selfidentified as being associated with the stream of their engineering degree as well as in different disciplinary areas over the course of a week. Participants repeated the survey over three consecutive weeks. The list of disciplinary areas was derived from the 22 Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (2008 – last updated in 2020) top level codes for fields of research. This source was used as it has the strongest influence of disciplinary definitions within the higher education sector, and it also guides the delineation of educational programs in Australia. Research fields were translated to plain English definitions of practice areas an engineer would likely encounter and can be seen in Figure 1. Participants also had the opportunity to add up to three additional options, to account for work in areas not clearly identified in the list. Participants’ consecutive weekly responses to the survey were linked via a selfselected pseudonym. Demographic and contextual questions were only asked in the first week. Participants were also invited to participate in a follow up interview, the results of which are due to be reported elsewhere. 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A total of 15 engineers who graduated between 3 and 5 years prior, as well as 3 more senior engineers each with approximately 10 years’ experience, completed the survey. The majority of respondents (14 out of 18) studied civil engineering. Participants were geographically distributed across five Australian States. Figure 1 captures the percentage of working time that the target sample (15 participants) spent across a range of work areas, averaged over the 3 weeks. Overall, the participants typically worked across up to nine different areas in a given week. Some of the reported work areas could well be considered part of engineering disciplinary work, but were classed by participants as outside what they considered to be engineering work. Figure 1. Percentage of time spent working in different disciplines averaged over 15 participants and 3 weeks Participants’ selection of ‘other’ as an option gave some insight into the varying interpretations of what is understood as ‘interdisciplinary’. One participant listed ‘crane lift studies’ as a discipline whilst another listed ‘supervision’ (of construction activities) as work outside their core discipline of civil engineering. The authors regarded these as in fact work activities, as opposed to disciplines, and so the time allocated to these activities needed to be re-allocated by the researcher to a listed discipline area. It is acknowledged that for undergraduate civil engineering degrees, current education programs focus on engineering science and design, which is distinct from construction management as either a separate qualification or a specialisation of civil engineering. However, the broad range of activities that the participants spent their time conducting supports the notion that working in top-tier construction as a sitebased engineer requires both skills, which by nature is interdisciplinary. In terms of the variability of the data over the three-week survey period, the ‘engineering associated with my stream of engineering’ response represented 22%, 36% and 29% respectively. This variation across weeks supports the decision to repeat the survey for three consecutive weeks, improving the reliability and validity of the data compared to a single snapshot at a point in time. With respect to skills learned in the workplace, a mean of 84% of the 18 participants’ work time was spent on tasks they needed to learn on the job. As expected, the more senior engineers entered values closer to 100%, but results showed a narrow range overall with quartiles 1 and 3 falling at 80% and 95% respectively. Most respondents spent 80-95% of their time applying skills learned on the job. While this could be interpreted as an indication that engineering degrees do not prepare graduates well for working in their respective roles, all had at least 3 years’ full-time experience. It was also unclear from the data how distinct these skills were from those learned as undergraduates – they may have been advanced skills building upon graduate level capabilities. However, these results together with those presented in Figure 1 do suggest that more breadth within engineering education could provide greater value in civil construction-type roles. 3.1 Preparation for work activities Responses to open-ended questions were analysed via qualitative thematic analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Gomm, 2003). Work activities for which participants reported feeling well prepared by their engineering studies at university tended to reflect technical design-oriented activities, similar to research on civil construction reported elsewhere (Pellicer et al., 2009). Skills such as project management, teamwork, and problem-solving were also reported, but to a lesser extent, indicating variability in the focus on these skills across different degree programs completed by participants. Participants often spoke of incomplete preparation, “not much - a little bit of project management and people management from group projects” [P13], and “nothing in full… every task required some form of learning on the job” [P14]. Work activities reported by participants as learned entirely on the job related primarily to construction methodologies, logistics, business administration, and managing subcontractors and other stakeholders. These highlight shortcomings of current degree programs, since these tasks are common beyond just the civil construction sector and are included in program accreditation competency standards. As one participant articulated, they needed to learn “most things construction,” [P12], consistent with the Pellicer et al. (2009) critique of civil engineering degrees that construction management topics are not a focus. ‘Project management’ appeared frequently in responses to areas participants felt both prepared and unprepared for. Therefore, there are mixed results in terms of the adequacy of project management units studied as part of engineering degrees in preparation for working in the construction industry. This does show, however, that project management is a vitally important skill for success as a site-based engineer. Of 17 total responses to questions regarding whether participants felt overall that their engineering degree prepared them well for their current role, 9 said “yes,” and 8 said “no”. There were common key themes cited by respondents who responded in the positive. These included “how to think and solve problems” [P10, P11 and P12], a solid technical background in engineering fundamentals [P1, P4, P7, P14 and P18], and less commonly, the development of ‘soft skills’ and being self-disciplined. Two participants noted that while they do not directly use the detailed technical design knowledge they learned at university, it did provide a helpful simulation for the work-environment where they must be adaptable, flexible and learn new things quickly in order to deliver an unfamiliar piece of scope [P1, P6]. Whilst Crawley (2001) asserted that the dominant culture of engineering education shifted from its roots in engineering practice to engineering science in the 1950’s (with fewer faculty members having worked as practicing engineers), one participant stated that their engineering degree was more focused on practice and did prepare them well for construction [P8], highlighting the need to consider the diversity of engineering degree programs in critiquing the sector as a whole. Several justifications were also provided by participants who felt that their engineering degree did not prepare them well for their current role. The civil engineers responded with very similar themes, suggesting that the aforementioned emphasis on engineering science in most universities would have prepared them well for a role in design consulting, but that their day-to-day tasks were learned almost exclusively on the job. One electrical engineering graduate felt that their “degree was mostly targeted towards people who would end up working in electronics, power systems or software engineering rather than construction” [P13], despite electrical systems being integral to all modern construction. A mechanical engineering graduate stated that their degree was focused on “concept design and development and first principles,” diverging significantly from the “management of experts, management of information, planning and coordination” [P16]. The last remaining survey question asked participants what additional skills and knowledge they thought should be included in engineering degrees to better prepare graduates for working in construction. Responses consistently identified a few key themes, rather than a plethora of additions to an already crowded engineering curriculum (Spinks et al., 2007), and were expectedly similar to the limitations in job preparation already identified as key areas of on-the-job learning. Specific suggestions included construction site visits, more practice reading technical information from design drawings, using software programs common to industry, and managing contracts. Views offered on the feasibility of these changes were mixed. One participant commented that “considering half the jobs on the market for engineers are supplied by construction companies, the knowledge specific to how things are built rather than designed should make up a greater percentage of courses at university” [P17]. In contrast, two respondents appreciated the complexity involved in engineering curriculum design [P14 and P16]. One wrote “the skills required that would have set me up perfectly for a job in construction are quite niche in terms of mechanical engineering jobs and would have taken up too much time at university” and that overall, they learned “a good range of skills that would allow (them) to start a career in any engineering industry” [P14]. Another commented “my university taught a great program, it was engaging and interesting being given the opportunity to solve problems with first principles, and developing concept designs and prototypes. What my university failed to do is prepare us for what the industry actually requires and making us understand the R&D work we all wanted was an ultra-competitive and very limited part of the industry” [P16]. Overall, half of participants concluded that their engineering degree did not prepare them well for their current role, with a focus on project delivery aspects of engineering practice lacking in current programs. Almost all the suggested additions to engineering degrees (except “methodologies”) are core to other disciplines outside of engineering, thus it is clear from the perspective of the 18 survey participants that a broader interdisciplinary education would be beneficial. 3.2 Comparison of results with similar research The most direct comparison for these results is with those of Trevelyan’s (2014) study. Summing and comparing technical tasks in Trevelyan’s study most closely aligned with our definition of ‘engineering work’ yields a figure of 23%, which is comparable to the 30% result yielded from our research study. Our results are also comparable with an internal study conducted by the study participants’ employer in 2020. This study of 16 Graduate and Site Engineers determined the percentage of time they spend in a typical week doing work for different functions within the company, as shown in Figure 2. Task definitions differ significantly, though still show significant periods of work dedicated to project management related tasks. The combination of “engineering (in office),” “engineering (on site)” and “design-related” give a total of 46%. Another contemporary study, conducted by a fellow Undergraduate Honours student using a similar method in a Chinese industry context surveyed 53 participants in a range of roles and companies (Yu, 2021). For the 13 participants identifying themselves as working in construction, the percentage breakdown of task-time allocation is shown in Figure 3 below. The time spent doing engineering work associated with the participants’ discipline is approximately 25% higher in Yu’s study at 55%, indicating that the findings of this study may not be transferable to other national contexts. Figure 2. Percentage of time spent working for different functions within the business (Participants’ employer study) Figure 3 Percentage of 13 Chinese construction engineers’ time spent working across different disciplines (Peer study, Yu 2021) 4 CONCLUSION In exploring the research question “how does interdisciplinarity impact graduate engineers day-to-day work and their preparation for industry practice?”, the sample collected here has added a useful perspective to the existing research about what graduate engineers do. The results themselves indicate the range and extent of work that site-based engineers do outside of their discipline. The method developed for the survey also represents a significant contribution of this paper to advancing our understanding of graduates’ work focus to inform engineering education. The findings of this study and its method provide a basis for replication in other contexts in order to build a clearer quantitative picture of interdisciplinary skills demand in engineering industry. Although the results of this study may vary across industries and practice contexts, comparison with similar studies shows a clear need to ensure that graduating engineers must be well prepared to collaborate with professionals from other disciplines. While the majority of participants suggested that interdisciplinary skills can be learned on the job, the consensus was that graduates should have an appreciation of what staff from the other disciplines “are doing and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it and the impact that (the graduate’s) role could have upon their job” [P7]. This finding is consistent with contemporary studies in the Australian context (Crosthwaite, 2019). The findings of this study suggest prioritisation of a greater emphasis on project delivery aspects of engineering to complement the existing prominent focus on design or analysis within engineering degree programs. It must be ensured that civil engineering graduates have at least a basic understanding of construction methodologies, logistics, business administration, contracts and working with subcontractors and other stakeholders in order to be better prepared for projectbased work. This could be achieved through broadening of existing capstone design experiences to include interdisciplinary teams and authentic projects (Habbal et al., 2024), more effective integration of industry placement programs which exist in most Australian programs, or establishment of elective project engineering learning pathways designed for students seeking careers in construction. 4.1 Limitations and Future work The sample size and single employer focus of this study do limit generalisation of findings, although the concurrence of the results of this study with similar studies completed elsewhere support the validity of the findings. In the Australian context, an update to the work of Palmer and colleagues’ (2015) study on sector of employment of recent engineering graduates would assist in determining which sectors to prioritise replication studies to build a more complete picture of what graduates do across the whole of industry. The self-identification of work outside the field of qualification is another challenge to be addressed in future work. It was apparent that some work classified by participants as interdisciplinary may be considered core to an engineer’s work, but not adequately addressed by their qualifying degree program. There is a need to better define within the survey instrument what is considered engineering work in accordance with accreditation standards (Engineers Australia, 2011).