On 23 June 2023, the Department of Quantity Surveying under the Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying (FBES) had organized an Academic-Industry Engagement Session. The High-Tea event was held at The Sage at Sixth in Residensi UTM Kuala Lumpur and joined by representatives from multiple Quantity Surveying companies in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. The objective of the event was to collect ideas from the industry players on improvement of graduates in the future.
The agenda of the event started with an opening speech from the program director, Sr. Dr Muzani Mustapa to introduce the department and the programs offered by the department. Afterwards, a welcome speech by the program coordinators Sr Dr. Shamsulhadi bin Bandi and Ts Dr. Nurshikin binti Mohamad Shukery. The coordinators then shared the curriculum plans prepared by the department for its students and explain the expectations that the department have from this event.
The coordinators then took charge of the event by hosting the Questions and Answers session which targeted on harvesting thoughtful ideas from different viewpoints of industry players. The 2 hour long dialogue session yielded numerous opinions on the issues of graduates in the industry, the teaching and learning product from the department and the availability of workforce in the construction sector. The participants had also shared various suggestions on potential improvement that the Department of Quantity Surveying can implement to empower the students’ skills.
As majority of the participants agree, the students need to be trained to be resilient and inquisitive in order to succeed as a construction industry player. Other than that, some specific technical skills were also shared by the participants for the department to consider in the future curriculum review. Some interactive dialogue session was also invigorated by the host to the participants to probe more detail on the subject of their sharing.
The event ended with the conclusion remarks by the host expressing the department’s sincerest appreciation for the support that had been shown. Finally, the event become a casual dialogue between the department members and the attendees. The attendees generally shared their support for this type of sharing session and hope for it to be held consistently in the future. Academic learning has to be consistently coordinated with the demands of the industry for graduates to be competent in the current Construction 4.0 era.