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Engineers and architects employ their technical abilities, innovative approaches, and problem solving skills to devise products and services that support human needs and contribute to the progress of civilizations. Designing and building in the real world require the collaborative input of several specialists from different disciplines; however, engineering and architecture curricula do not necessarily emphasize multidisciplinary education. To mirror the needs of the j b market, university education should focus on training students to work in a multidisciplinary environment and develop a holistic view of engineering practices that their future jobs would demand. This study presents a new course aimed at engaging first year engineering and architecture students in a multidisciplinary environment, which inspires students' creativity in problem solving and engineering design. This paper presents different teaching methods for achieving various learning objectives, analyzing students' satisfaction, and highlighting lessons learned from delivering a novel course to engineering and architecture students. Results showed that students were attracted to learning about other disciplines, appreciated the multidisciplinary aspect of engineering, and were interested in acquiring professional engineering skills. Thus, the course was successful in creating a smooth transition between high school and university in helping students lay out the tracks for further development of their engineering skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Last Planner System (LPS) has been used on construction projects to improve reliable work planning. Lookahead planning is an intermediate process that connects the master or phase schedule to the weekly work plan. Construction teams employ lookahead planning to achieve various objectives including a breakdown down of activities into the level of operations, operations design, and constraint removal to make tasks ready for execution. Tasks Made Ready (TMR) measures the performance of lookahead planning in identifying and eliminating constraints to make activities ready for implementation. The purpose of this paper is to study through computer simulation the impact of TMR on task execution, reliability of weekly work planning, and project duration. Results show that TMR is a good predictor of project duration. These results advise planners on the importance of the constraint removal process, how it influences the reliability of construction planning, and its impact on project duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variability embedded in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry often results from inefficient planning strategies, sub-optimal levels of coordination, and poor flow of information and resources. This inherent variability disrupts workflow in design, results in longer cycle times, increased costs, and rework; thus undermining design, as well as, construction performance. This paper addresses design workflow at the intersection of the social and process aspects of the design phase. These aspects have been studied separately in previous research works, which prevented capturing a comprehensive and realistic understanding of the design process. Accordingly, this study develops a new approach to qualitatively and quantitatively model the exchange of information between design players and pave the way to assessing the impacts of Building Information Modeling and new project procurement strategies on improving design workflow. Agent-based modeling is used to dynamically represent the relationship between social interactions and the diffusion of information between individuals and teams. The study presents a novel design workflow management approach that bridges the gaps in previous studies as it focuses on team structures, interaction dynamics, and information diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]