Developing construction professionals of the 21st century: Renewed vision for leadership

The construction industry faces several technical, social, financial, political, and cultural challenges. Developments such as the growing volume of activity, increasing number of active stakeholders, advancement in technology, more intense global competition, and demand for fast-track completion, have created many distinct challenges for construction professionals. Consequently, there is a need to equip the professionals with hard (technical) as well as soft (management and leadership) skills. Construction professionals invariably work in teams and often assume leadership roles as the design manager, construction manager, procurement manager, contracts manager, or project manager. They deal with various project stakeholders and often get involved in sensitive decision making and dispute resolution processes. There is a broad sentiment in the industry that today's new graduates are not adequately trained to deal with the soft issues on complex construction projects. In particular, academic programs do not prepare professionals with an appropriate blend of hard and soft skills. In this paper, it is argued that in order to develop competent professionals who have strong leadership skills, the universities, the construction industry, professional organizations, and the government need to form a broad collaboration. A conceptual model of this potential collaborative relationship is presented, and specific roles for the universities, the industry, professional bodies, and government in the lifelong professional development of the industry's human resources are discussed.