Construction Rehabilitation in Civil Engineering at bachelor degree level: A guideline course

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In general terms, construction rehabilitation is not sufficiently studied worldwide in civil engineering schools. This article proposes an international guideline course on construction rehabilitation for civil engineering students at the bachelor degree level. As we live in an increasingly globalized world, the course aims to prepare students in the same basic concepts so the course content and its focus can be common for all civil engineering programs worldwide. Nevertheless, the course should be considered as a general guideline. At each university, special attention should be paid to the topics that are most common due to the varying construction practices, preservation laws and regulations, and legal jurisdiction governing the scope of practice in construction rehabilitation that exist in the region/country in which the university is located. Moreover, the guideline course should be focused on existing building types, both significant historic ones and those that make up the day-to-day rehabilitation market. To achieve this, the initial step of the methodology was the study and integration of the results obtained in a survey sent to lecturers at 89 universities in 30 countries around the world. Then, a preliminary grouping was done of topics that could be included in the course, preassigning a teaching time to each topic. Later, various renowned experts in the matter audited the tentative guideline course. Finally, based on their opinions and comments, the definitive guideline course was rewritten. Through this course, civil engineering students will improve their ability to recognize, analyze, diagnose, and solve problems that commonly appear in existing buildings, and they will increase their knowledge about maintaining and conserving them.