Deficient collaboration prevails between segments of country's civil engineering educational institutions and construction industry leading to outcome of college graduates equipped with much theoretical knowledge skills. The Masterbuilder provides an overview report. There exists a deficient interface between construction industry and construction engineering academia. The soft coordination is a result of minimal practical exposure of the engineering faculty to the working requirements of the construction industry. This is coupled with low industry-academia interaction at the grass root level for research. There has been a dual fall out arising out of the gap. First, there has been churning out of engineering post graduates from educational institutions with bare or minimal industry exposure, requiring quite substantial on job training (OJT) by the industry for getting the fresh graduates fully job ready. On the other, there has been low research output for generation of indigenous civil engineering construction technologies.

"On contrary to the US or the Western part of the world the construction industry and the civil engineering educational institutes in India, barring the Indian Institute of Technologies works in isolated compartments", laments Dr. B B Pandey, Senior Professor, Civil Engineering Department, IIT Kharagpur. He informs, it is a practice in the West to send the faculty members, to disseminate practical information value to the emerging graduates, on a regular basis through industrial training. Ironically, this is not the case in India." Similar views are endorsed by senior civil engineering faculty members from Jadavpur Engineering College, country's premier engineering college offering civil engineering courses at Kolkata.

Dimensions & Fall Out of Deficient Collaboration

According to Dr. Pandey, the industrial training of the faculty members abroad is based on a proper industry-educational coordination which works on a joint platform with a broader approach to share working research field data on a sustainable basis.

According to other senior IIT Khragpur, Civil Engineering professors, the outcome of the industry educational institutes coordination is dually beneficial to the faculty members of the educational institutions as they can get their students trained with the updated working standards and requirements of the industry, say techno-economic feasibility studies, much essential for public-private-partnership projects, which are increasingly becoming an order of the day for developing infrastructure projects. The other benefit of the collaboration is the industry is able to get research inputs from the academia newer construction technologies, to which they can add valuable inputs to suit their customized construction requirements.

However, all these is not a convention in India, where civil engineering educational institutions backed by their faculty members lay their emphasis on  theore tical research, where most of the teaching hours by the faculty members is spent on theoretical teaching and evaluation of the theoretical research. Ironically, the students are trained in the same theoretical order, in turn contributing little research value to meet the present day working standards and interests of the construction industry, which are technically and otherwise much more multifaceted than before, post completion of their civil engineering graduation. The reason according to the industry for the theoretical approach by the faculty members in teaching is owing to selection of subjects and course by academic institutions of ad hoc basis, minus the industry inputs.

According, to Dr. M L Roychowdhury, Senior Project Manager, Gherzi Eastern India Private Limited, "the reason for minimal technically proficient fresh engine ering graduates is faculty members have got minimal exposure in the industry, essential to create knowledgeable practical engineering graduates for the industry. Gherzi undertakes project management consultancy for construction infrastructure projects.

According to Dr. Roychowdury, an ex civil engineering-IITian, " owing to deficient practical knowledge base it takes a fresh graduate much longer time on (OJT) to get accustomed to the job, taking it's toll at times on timely project completion, which although gets offset by certain degree of mechanization and better project management. Nonetheless, it takes some toll on the financials of the project developers for the additional initiative."

According to the construction industry, although, fresh engineering graduates are more proficient in handling automation, they fall short in the physical
essence or analytical skills for successful execution of the job. Further, as per the industry, the fresh graduates are weak in technical communication skills,much essential in the present day context of construction industry's requirement. Weakness in technical communicating skills involves, interpreting the technical data or specification to the concerned information users.

Practical industrial exposure to the students through faculty members is much essential not only from the engineering point of view for on site requirements but for successful completion of project from execution-to-commissioning from end to end. This involving, survey-planning-designtendering-execution-commissioning-handoverproject maintenance, among which planning stage is most critical which has to take holistic data inputs for successful execution and commissioning of the project.

According to Dr. Roychowdhury in today's increasing context of PPP projects, civil engineers involved in planning and project execution have to take into account legal, environmental issues before signing the contract. Moreover, they should have adequate knowledge base for evaluating the commercial viability of the project, prior to signing of contract.

But most unfortunately, the ground reality are, the fresh engineering graduates are not abreast with legal,environmental matters or on subject issue ertaining to the commercial viability of the project. This in turn makes the project commercially unviable backed by faulty contracts in many cases.

Essentials of Practical Approach

To bridge the deficiency it would be essential from the part of the engineering faculty members to have a more practical approach to meet the requirements
of the industry through their students. There has to be requisite support to the endeavor both by the industry and the government.

As a case it could be ideal for engineering colleges across the country to adopt the course and syllabus formulation content undertaken by the Indian institute of Technologies in the country for practical exposure of the students.

This could be done through accumulation of field inputs from the ex-graduates serving the industry for long, an approach followed by the IIT's through getting regular data feed back from it's alumni and old batch mates who have worked on consultancy or critical construction projects for formulation of syllabus course contents.

Pertinent would bee to provide multidisciplinary practical exposure to the civil engineering students,involving public health engineering, structural ngineering, transportation engineering to suit the multi various requirements of the industry. This is based on the fact that the expanse of the construction industry is quite large.

In tandem it would be requisite would be to update laboratory equipments, upgradation of teaching software and thorough update of library study materials, which the industry perceive is mundane and outdated. But overall there would be requirement of thorough collaboration between the academy and ducational institutions, led by practical  exposure of the faculty members for formulation of updated course and syllabus content for the present day requirements of the industry. But nonetheless, as of now it is felt that with increased focus on PPP projects and assurance on the part of the project developers to develop and execute quality projects there would be an increased coordination with the industry and civil engineering educational institutes.

A Bureau Report