Writing Built Environment Dissertations and Projects E-Book

Peter Farrell

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 783

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Writing Built Environment Dissertations and Projects will help you to write a good dissertation or project by giving you a good understanding of what should be included, and showing you how to use data collection and analysis tools in the course of your research.

• Addresses prominent weaknesses in under-graduate dissertations including weak data collection; superficial analysis and poor reliability and validity
• Includes many more in-depth examples making it easy to understand and assimilate the concepts presented
• Issues around study skills and ethics are embedded throughout the book and the many examples encourage you to consider the concepts of reliability and validity
• Second edition includes a new chapter on laboratory based research projects
• Supporting website with sample statistical calculations and additional examples from a wider range of built environment subjects

Leseprobe

Writing Built Environment Dissertations and Projects

Practical Guidance and Examples

Dr Peter Farrell MSc FRICS FCIOB

Reader and Programme LeaderMSc Construction Project ManagementUniversity of BoltonUK

with

Dr Fred Sherratt MCIOB C.BuildE MCABE FHEA

Senior LecturerAnglia Ruskin UniversityUK

and

Dr Alan Richardson MSc FCIOB MInstCES PGCEd

Reader and Programme LeaderBEng Civil EngineeringUniversity of NorthumbriaUK

SECOND EDITION

This edition first published 2017© 2011, 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Author biographies

Peter Farrell

Peter Farrell is a reader in construction management at the University of Bolton, UK, and programme leader for the university’s MSc construction project management. He has delivered undergraduate and postgraduate modules in construction management, commercial management and research methods for 20 years. His industry training was in construction planning and quantity surveying and his post-qualification experience was working as a contractor’s site manager.

Fred Sherratt

Fred Sherratt is a senior lecturer in construction management at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. She has over 12 years’ experience in the construction industry and worked her way up from site secretary, through construction planning to the position of construction manager for a large UK contractor. Fred has attained numerous awards for her research.

Alan Richardson

Alan Richardson is a reader in civil engineering at Northumbria University, UK, and programme leader for the BEng in civil engineering. He has over 90 publications mainly based upon technical studies of materials. There are two main streams of his current research, one relating to the use of bacteria in cementitious materials to improve long-term durability and reduce life cycle costs. This work is being undertaken in conjunction with RILEM. The other is researching fibre use to improve impact and blast resistance in concrete. His industry experience is 26 years as managing director of an SME construction company.

Preface

There are many changes between the first and second editions. Most important, are welcome contributions from Dr Fred Sherratt and Dr Alan Richardson. Fred has strengthened sections of the text related to qualitative research and methodology, and has also added a glossary of research terms in Appendix A. Alan has added chapter 6, which examines in greater detail technical civil engineering projects. There are eight exemplar research proposals included in Appendix D that cover the fields of building and civil engineering. The authors of these proposals are acknowledged.

The word ‘projects’ has been added to the title, such that it now reads ‘Writing Built Environment Dissertations and Projects’. Most universities use the term ‘dissertation’ for building degrees and ‘projects’ for civil engineering. The content of the book has been updated to ensure that it does indeed embrace the needs of civil engineers.

There is emphasis on the difference between ‘non-technical’ work mostly found on building programmes and ‘technical’ civil engineering projects. Some examples from the first edition are retained, but many are updated and changed. Exemplar datasets in tables are produced in Excel, since spreadsheets are useful for collating and sorting raw data; also for performing analysis. Some examples are screenshots from Word. It is acknowledged that you may use spreadsheets and word processors other than Microsoft. Many new figures and tables are introduced to help support explanations.

The aim of the text is to provide practical guidance on the preparation of undergraduate dissertations and projects in the built environment. Students doing research at masters and PhD level, may also find the text useful. It is hoped that it will give students the platform to attain the maximum possible mark. Some sections of the book may contribute towards enhanced performance in other modules. For example, suggestions about how to develop theory and use literature as part of a critical appraisal are common to many subjects in the built environment and indeed other disciplines. The book is ordered around a structure that may be useful for a research document; that is, it starts with material that should be contained in an introduction chapter and finishes with material that should be in the conclusion. Embedded throughout the book are issues around study skills and ethics. There are many examples included, using a variety of methodological designs in which students are encouraged to consider the concepts of reliability and validity. A key difference between dissertations/projects and other courseworks is that the middle of the document should include a data collection process and some analysis. Suggestions are made about how to collect data and how to do analysis. The analytical chapters cover qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative chapter demonstrates how to include some rigour in the analytical process, rather than is often the case, where students rely on simplistic browsing of material. The quantitative chapter attempts to avoid some of the complexity in statistical work without devaluing its usefulness. The book encourages students to undertake a process of self-reflection at the end of their research, and to include a section on limitations and criticisms of their own studies. It is hoped that the examples used will stimulate ideas about how students can develop their chosen topic area into dissertation format.

Acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to those referees who gave valuable feedback on the first edition; thank you.

About the companion website

A website is provided to support this book (www.wiley.com/go/Farrell/Built_Environment_Dissertations_and_Projects). There are many tables and figures, particularly in the statistical analysis sections, that include large data sets.  The web page will allow you to open these tables and perform statistical tests or produce charts using Excel on the same raw data used in the text. Alternatively, you may substitute your raw data in the templates provided, and copy and paste them into your research documents. You may copy the files onto your own computer and adjust font sizes and so on to suit your own requirements. Tables 8.3, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7 and 9.16 in this book have data ‘hidden’ to allow reproduction on the book page; on the website all the data is ‘unhidden’. Many of the references at the end of each chapter are available on the web. While they may be found through search engines, or typing in the full web address, you may find it easier to locate publications through the links on the website. You might find the templates in Appendix B useful. These are available for download. Appendix E includes transcripts of interviews with two site managers. There were eight interviews in total for the given research project; transcripts of the other six are on the website, together with the later stages of the analytical process. Finally, the statistical tables in Appendix F are available for download.

1Introduction

The titles and objectives of the sections of this chapter are the following:

1.1 Introduction; to set the scene and describe the dissertation process

1.2 Terminology and nomenclature; to emphasise the importance of the objective

1.3 Document structure; to provide a template

1.4 Possible subject areas for your dissertation; suggest topic areas and encourage early reading

1.5 Professional bodies and the non-technical or technical dissertation or project; to distinguish between these two different types

1.5.1 The difference between non-technical and technical

1.6 Qualitative and quantitative analysis; to distinguish between the two analytical schools

1.7 The student/supervisor relationship and time management; to provide templates

1.8 Ethical compliance and risk assessments; to identify ground rules for compliance with codes of practice

1.8.1 Physical or emotional harm; laboratory risk assessments

1.8.2 Confidentiality and anonymity

1.8.3 Generally

1.9 House style or style guide; to promote consistency and provide a template

1.10 Writing style; to identify potential pitfalls

1.11 Proofreading; to encourage it, as a process, using independent help if necessary

1.12 Extra support?; to describe help available from university disability support units

1.13 A research proposal; what to do if you are required by your university to do a proposal

1.14 Viva or viva voce; to describe what it is and how to prepare

1.1 Introduction

In some universities the dissertation or project may carry as much as one quarter weighting towards the final year degree classification. It is the flagship document of your study. It is the document that external examiners will look at with greatest scrutiny. You may want to take it to your employer and/or prospective employers. You will hopefully be proud to show it to members of your family, and it will sit on your bookshelf so that you can show it to your grandchildren. It is a once-in-a-lifetime journey for most; it is to be enjoyed and remembered. Though it does not happen often, with the help of supervisors, some students may develop their research into a publication. That may involve condensing the work into about ten pages for delivery at a conference or even for inclusion as a journal paper. It is one thing to get a degree qualification on your CV; quite another for you to be a published author.

One of the key criteria for the research is that it must have some originality. That is, not to discover something new but perhaps to look at an area that has already been investigated, and to take a different perspective on it or to use a different methodology. It is more than an assignment – the research process must seek the information, analyse it and offer conclusions. Modest objectives are adequate. Better dissertations and projects have robust methods of analysing qualitative data or some basic statistical analysis.

Dissertations and projects have assessment criteria. To achieve marks in the upper echelons (70%+), criteria often require that work should demonstrate ‘substantial evidence of originality and creativity’, ‘very effective integration of theory and practice’, ‘excellent grasp of theoretical, conceptual, analytical and practical elements’, and ‘all information/skills deployed’.

There are two separate strands to your research. The first is that you must develop your knowledge in your chosen topic so that you become ‘expert’. One of the reasons you may have chosen your subject is that you may want to learn more about it. Indeed, it is very important that you do this. The second is that you must conduct a piece of research, employing appropriate research methodology. In your document you must explain and substantiate your methodology; it must stand up to scrutiny. The method that you use must include the collection and analysis of data. The two strands go hand in hand. It is not to say that the weighting is 50:50, or any other percentage, but there must be substantial evidence of both in your dissertation. You must demonstrate that you have produced a piece of research in the true meaning of the word ‘research’; it is not adequate that your document is a ‘mere’ report.

1.2 Terminology; nomenclature

Clarity in research is absolutely critical; the plethora of terminology used by academics can be unhelpful, fuzzy and for some misleading. That is just the way it is. It may be useful for you to employ your own rigid definitions of such terminology, or at the very least be consistent in the language you use in your work.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) a professor of physics at Göttingen University, cited on the Quotations Page (2015), wrote ‘One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything’. Your research should start with a question, from which you will develop an objective in which you will ‘do’ something that will enable you to answer the question. What you will ‘do’ may involve testing a hypothesis. The research question, objective and hypothesis should all match each other, for example:

Research question: How well do UK contractors comply with best practice in health and safety? (note the question mark)

Objective: To determine how well UK contractors comply with best practice in health and safety.

Hypothesis: The compliance of UK contractors with best practice in health and safety is excellent (or in a different context to your research you may write ‘not good enough’).

You need to make it clear in your introduction that you have a research question, objective and hypothesis that match, but when you communicate with people in industry and also when you find the need to repeat yourself in your document it may be best to do so using the term ‘objective’. People in industry are likely to be familiar with the word ‘objective’, but less familiar with research questions and hypotheses. An objective is a statement of what you will ‘do’ in your research.

When describing what a research project will ‘do’, students often express this by using words other than ‘objective’. Some examples are: ‘the focus of the study’, ‘the reason for the study’, ‘the study looks into’, ‘the study tries to’, ‘the study examines’, ‘purpose’, ‘goal’, ‘direction’, ‘intention’ or ‘seeks to’. Perhaps use of these phrases should be discouraged.

It must be recognised that universities and individual academics will have their own preferences, and students must be able to adapt flexibly to work with supervisors, and also to understand the writing of others who use different language. Most supervisors will be comfortable that you ‘hang’ the whole of your study around objectives; put more clearly, objectives, objectives and objectives.

1.3 Document structure

A suggested structure/template for a dissertation or project is:

No number

Preliminary pages

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

Theory and literature review

Chapter 3

Research design and methodology

Chapter 4

Analysis, results and findings

Chapter 5

Discussion

Chapter 6

Conclusions and recommendations

No number

References and bibliography

No number

Appendices

This is not written in tablets of stone, but is merely a framework around which your structure may be designed. It is for individual researchers to design their structure and to agree it with their supervisor. These may be considered as chapter titles, but they should be ‘flavoured’ by words relevant to your study area, e.g. ‘The development of theory and literature about money as a motivator for construction craftspeople’.

The weight of each chapter, or the number of words, does not necessarily lend itself to one sixth in each. There is an argument for saying that the first two chapters, as the opening to the document, could be about one third weight. The middle two chapters comprising the methodology and analytical framework could be about one third weight. Finally the last two chapters, closing off the document, could be about one third weight. Often it is the last part where students lose marks; they simply run out of time after completing the analysis. The consequence is that documents were heading for really good marks only achieve mid-range marks.

Each chapter should open with an introduction – there should even be an introduction to the introduction chapter – and close with a summary. Students often do not like writing either introductions or summaries, and question their value for the reader. The introduction to each chapter need only be a few paragraphs. It is not for readers to embark on a voyage of discovery as they read each chapter. The ‘introduction to the introduction’ may start with the aim of the study. It may tell the reader that the introduction chapter will provide a background to the topic area and description of the problem, give a historical perspective, give the research goals (including the objectives), describe briefly the methodology, give an outline of the remaining parts of the document and summarise the chapter. But do not write it as mechanically as the above. Ensure that it is flavoured by your topic area, e.g. a historical perspective of PFI as a procurement method. The writing style of a summary is different from the writing style of an introduction. It does exactly what its name implies: it summarises what has gone before. It should not say ‘this chapter has outlined the problem’. It should summarise in the narrative the key points of the problem in a few lines. You need to say what the problem is. A useful tactic when writing a summary is to read each page and condense it into one or two carefully selected sentences. The reason for a summary is that readers who have taken the journey through your chapter, may need some moments of thought and reflection about what they have just read, before going on. They may indeed have forgotten what they read at the beginning of the chapter by the time they get to the end. Also, readers may not read the whole document in one sitting. When they come to recommence reading, the summary can refresh their minds before continuing.

The whole document should be in report numbering format. Start with the introduction chapter as chapter 1. The introduction to the introduction is 1.1., 1.2 definitions of important phrases, 1.3 background to the topic area etc. Try to avoid too many subsections, but if they are needed they become, e.g. 1.3.1, 1.3.2 etc.

Page number the whole document, except the cover page. By convention, preliminary pages are numbered with Roman numerals, that is (i), (ii) etc. The first page is a declaration, numbered Roman numeral (i). People with dyslexia may find it hard to distinguish between Roman numerals; therefore alternatively consider letters, (a), (b), (c) etc. Pages after the preliminary pages, starting with the cover page to chapter 1, use Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3 etc. The cover page to chapter 1, thus starts at page 1. Page numbering with Arabic numerals continues into the reference section and the appendices. Separate parts of the appendices are labelled by letters not numbers; that is appendix A may be a covering letter to a questionnaire, appendix B may be the questionnaire itself and so on. If appendices are related, perhaps use letters and numbers e.g. A1 and A2 have the same theme, B1, B2, B3 ditto etc., as we have done in this book.

The preliminary pages to a research document should include the following separate parts:

unnumbered: a cover page with the document title, name of author, name of university, year and degree title.

declaration using words prescribed by the university such as ‘I declare that this research has not been submitted to any other university or institution of learning, and the work included is entirely my own except where explicitly cited in the text’. You will be using and citing the work of others, as described in

chapter 3

.

an acknowledgements page: it is usual to thank people who have contributed to the research through their time or sponsorship, employers, friends or members of your family and supervisors. Only a short statement is usual.

abstract: the abstract is a very concise summary and should be written very carefully.

Readers may be initially attracted to documents by titles, but these can be misleading, and more information is required. So the purpose of the abstract is to allow readers to make a quick decision about whether they wish to read further sections of the document, or alternatively they may be able to make a sensible judgement that the document is not relevant to their needs. Often readers who are browsing previous research will read abstracts and decide not to read on; that is fine. They have been able to quickly make an informed decision based upon a full and concise summary of the document. Since you have a limited number of words, and you may wish to entice people into the document, each part must be measured carefully. External examiners will read some, but cannot read all documents. Given a choice of which to read, they may be attracted by research with a well-articulated abstract. In academic publications abstracts are often 200–250 words in length, but in dissertations perhaps a larger word count is acceptable. An abstract confined neatly to one A4 page of text, single line space, 12 size font, perhaps three or four paragraphs with a line space between, would be about 500 words. Try to avoid going onto a second page, even for one line. This is your opportunity to sell your work. In research terms, it would be a serious failing if subsequent researchers picked up your document with the idea to further their knowledge in your field, but because of a lack of clarity in the abstract, were led to think that your work was not relevant. If a sentence, or indeed a single word, is not necessary to convey the message required, it should be taken out. The abstract is an art in writing concisely and with precision.

It should: give the topic, state the aim, outline the problem, give the main objectives or hypotheses, summarise the methodology (including population description, sample size if appropriate, method of data collection and analyses) and state the main findings, conclusions and recommendations. It can be written as work proceeds but can only be completed at the end. Students often adopt a writing style for an abstract similar to the following: ‘the study will give an objective, and describe the methodology…’ etc. This is not an abstract, since it would leave readers without the information required. The abstract must actually state what the objective is, and state the methodology. Some students submit their documents without an abstract; deduct 5 marks!

An example abstract is included in appendix C.

contents page: this should list the main titles of each chapter. It is not usually necessary to list all subsections of chapters on the main contents page. Subsequently, each chapter should have its own cover page that details the titles of subsections within the chapter.

list of abbreviations: in your narrative, convention is that at the first point of using each abbreviation in your document it should be spelt out in full, with its abbreviation in brackets, thus: ‘The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is responsible for …’. At any subsequent need to refer to the HSE you can then just use the abbreviation. If readers later ‘forget’ what HSE stands for, they can refer to your list of abbreviations at the front of the document. Do not overdo the use of abbreviations; however, the construction industry does use them frequently, and you may reasonably have a list of abbreviations that is about a page long.

glossary of symbols (if statistical tests are executed): letters of the Greek or Roman alphabet are often used to distinguish between different tests. See

sections 8.1

and

9.1

for examples of statistical symbols.

glossary of terms: this ensures a common understanding even for quite well known terms as well as terms that have a particular meaning in the subject topic of the research. It will include a brief definition of their meaning in the context of the study. Ensure that such definitions are authoritative; that is, from the literature. For example, there may be a need to refer to ‘sustainable development in construction’ in your document. That may mean different things to different readers, so give an authoritative meaning: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Brundtland, 1987). You may need to define many phrases in your document.

lists of appendices, figures and tables: similar to the format at the beginning of this textbook.

Figures may be pie charts, histograms, graphs, or diagrams. Tables may contain results of experiments, or summarise data. Do not overdo pictorial representation of data just to get some colour into your document. A small table, for example, may better show the age profile of people, rather than a brightly coloured pie chart using half a page of space. Figures and tables should be numbered, and prefixed by the number of the chapter in which they appear, e.g. figure 2.3 will be the third figure in chapter 2. The title and content of figures or tables should be such that they can be understood on a stand-alone basis. The reader should not have to browse other sections of text to gain an understanding of a figure or table. Do not refer in your text to ‘the figure above’ or ‘the table below’. Figures and tables should be introduced in your text, and then inserted in your document in the first subsequent convenient position, perhaps at the end of that paragraph or on the next page if that position is close to the bottom of a page. By convention, the titles of figures appears under the figure, and the titles of tables above the table; in both cases the figures/tables themselves and the text for titles can be centred on the page.

If figures or tables are produced in Excel or other software, they can be imported into Word using the ‘snipping tool’ available in the ‘search all programmes and files’ box of the start menu, as illustrated in figure 1.1. Alternatively use the print screen, paste, format and crop functions in Word.

Figure 1.1 Using the ‘snipping tool’ to cut and paste figures, tables or images in Word.

1.4 Possible subject areas for your research

The topic area that you choose for your work should ideally be related to the specialism that you are studying within construction. You should consider all parts of the construction process from and including inception (clients with ideas that require projects) through to construction, maintenance, refurbishment, demolition and recycle. Most disciplines are interested to use their skills to improve the service provided to clients at all stages of the process. In practice, modern methods of procurement integrate the supply chain, and therefore all professionals are now involved both earlier and later in the process than has traditionally been the case. You may consider issues from the perspective of any party in the supply chain, e.g. clients, end users, consultants, contractors, subcontract specialists, suppliers, manufacturers or indeed other stakeholders such as investors or the public. If you are a civil engineer, you may need to do a ‘technical’ piece of research, as described in section 1.5.1.

Non-technical topic areas often include soft people issues, such as human resource management, job satisfaction, grievances, employee turnover or quality of life measures. Resources such as subcontractors, plant, material and capital (money) are also popular. You may want to specialise in finance, planning, legal issues or contracts, procurement methods, health and safety, quality, design aesthetics, planning, building information modelling, maintenance, business ethics or use of information technology and software. In the context that you may wish to consider variables in your study, popular dependent variables align with key performance indicators promoted by Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment (Constructing Excellence, 2015), such as client satisfaction, cost predictability, time predictability, quality or safety. Sustainability issues driven by the climate change agenda are often researched. There is great potential for studies in many areas related to sustainability, such as the UK’s Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM, 2015) or renewable energy. Defining and measuring best practice in a given field may be the basis of a useful study. The definition of best practice could be an objective of your study met by the literature review. You may find investigating best practice useful to you personally, since it is a valuable way to enhance your own knowledge in the field. The measurement of compliance with best practice by organisations or individuals may then be the basis for another objective, to be met by the main data collection process in the middle part of your study. When Paul Morrell came to the newly created post of UK government chief construction advisor in November 2009, he stated ‘we’re going to need to start counting carbon as rigorously as we count money, and accepting that a building is not of value if the pound signs look okay, but the carbon count does not’ (Richardson, 2009) – lots of opportunities, therefore to measure carbon. The outcome of your research should not be a ‘project’ of a descriptive kind or a report or the design of a structure. The emphasis is on data collection and analysis, around objectives. It may be management, technology or science based. In July 2013, the UK government launched its publication ‘Construction 2025: industrial strategy for construction – government and industry in partnership’ (BIS, 2013). It provides many potential subjects for research, for example its vision for 2025 around people, the digital economy (Building Information Modelling et al.), low carbon, industry growth and leadership.

Most often, part-time students select a problem from their workplace; talk to your colleagues at work. Alternatively, you may select something that is current in industry or academia. Full-time students may seek out a mentor from industry – very often practitioners will be delighted to ‘put something back’ into the education system they have gone through themselves. You should have been reading about current issues throughout your study, so as you are selecting the topic area for your research, you should speed that reading up. The lead sources to look for current issues are websites and conferences of your professional bodies, other academic conferences such as ARCOM, the weekly construction press and construction academic journals. You should be reading each week at least one of Construction News, New Civil Engineer or Building. Download the apps or log on to the websites of The Construction Index or Construction Enquirer. Find all these sources through a web search engine. To ensure that your study has academic credibility, if you start from a practical perspective, you will need to take it back to its theoretical roots. Alternatively, you may start with a theory and take it forward to its practical application; for example, flagship theories in management, such as leadership and motivation.

1.5 Professional bodies and the non-technical or technical dissertation or project

Undergraduate degree programmes are often accredited by professional bodies. Accreditation is very important to universities, and also very important to you as students. Accreditation means that degree programmes are approved by the relevant professional body, and depending on the level of accreditation, successful students are deemed to have achieved the minimum educational requirements of that professional body. Attaining your degree does not mean you immediately become a full member; there is usually a requirement for a period of practice in industry or research. You will then need to demonstrate your competence against a range of criteria.

It is important for you to become a member of a professional body. Passing your degree demonstrates you are good at academic work, but in your later career you need to demonstrate to employers your competence in practice or, as required by the Construction Design and Management Regulations (HSE, 2015), that you have appropriate skills, knowledge and experience. Your membership of a professional body indicates a commitment to keep yourself up to date with current developments in construction through your continuing professional development (CPD). Also, you will be signed up to a code of professional conduct and comply with the highest ethical standards. The best employers and construction clients need evidence that they are dealing with people who are up to date, professional and ethical. Professional body membership is that evidence, a passport to employment.

The key professional bodies in the built environment, in alphabetical order and spilt between the loose classifications of building and civil engineering, are as follows:

Building

Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE)

Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists (CIAT)

Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)

Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)

Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)

Civil engineering

Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)

Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers (IHIE)

The Institution of Highways and Transportation (IHT)

The Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE)

You should join at least one professional body while you are studying, as a student member; if appropriate, more than one. Many have free membership for students. You should use their libraries and attend CPD events during your study period. After you have completed your degree, you should aspire to become a full member. Depending on the institution, that may be possible within say three years, but some institutions require a masters degree level qualification. Full membership of most of the above professional bodies brings with it ‘chartered’ status, a prestigious title.

As an entire year of students leave their course of study with their degree, there are ‘x’ number of students in the job market competing for available jobs. The question to students then will be: ‘What will differentiate your application from the next person?’ CPD attendance displays to employers, a commitment to being involved in their chosen career pathway. That can make the difference between employment or not! There are other criteria beyond CPD attendance, but if you have already networked you may perform much better in a job interview because of CPD attendance.

When professional bodies accredit programmes, they stipulate generically, the content of degrees. The building professional bodies may be happy with either non-technical or technical research. The civil engineering professional bodies are likely to favour only technical research. Civil engineers often call the final research document a project, not a dissertation. Some universities have a BSc (Hons) degree in civil engineering, others a BEng (Hons) civil engineering. It may be possible for BSc (Hons) programmes to undertake non-technical work, but BEng programmes, which are on the path towards chartered engineer status, will require a technical project. That is a requirement of the professional bodies that accredit civil engineering degrees.

1.5.1 The difference between non-technical and technical

Non-technical work may involve many of the ‘soft’ or ‘subjective’ management issues. The data collection and analytical processes may be qualitative, or indeed quantitative and involve statistical calculations or mathematics based on the soft data collected.

Technical subjects or technologies are likely to involve mathematical/quantitative work and science/chemistry; it will involve ‘hard’ or ‘objective’ data. It may involve an appraisal of what variables influence behaviour in the civil engineering specialist fields of structures, geotechnics, hydraulics and drainage, materials science, geomatics or land surveying and transportation. It may also be possible to classify your work in one or more of the three key strands of civil engineering work: design, sustainability and health and safety. Your project may not be exclusively technical. Your introduction and the literature review may be partly qualitative, but the literature review may also bring to the table the latest up-to-date technical and scientific position in your subject area. It is also good that you do some qualitative work by getting out and communicating with individual practitioners and companies about your project, and if you do so, mention it in your methodology chapter. However, in the middle part, there must be strong focus on analysis of a technical dataset, and that will very likely involve some mathematical tools. It is unlikely that your method would include a data collection tool such as an electronic questionnaire; yes, do question people but that may be best done as part of some supplementary qualitative work and networking to support the validity of the problem that you will investigate or interpret using some of your results and findings.

What happens if you do non-technical research on a technical programme? Anecdotally, a really good non-technical dissertation may get a 55% mark from your university and a ‘glum’ look from the accreditation body, while a similarly good technical document might get 65% and a smile.

The next key issue is ‘where should the dataset come from’? There is the possibility that you could take the data from the literature, and then, to meet the requirement of your work being original, perform some type of analysis that has not been done before. Perhaps the data collection will involve some experimentation in laboratories or some fieldwork or some computer modelling – though not all students will use these types of methods. Getting your own data supports a view that it is good to demonstrate that you have been proactive in your research, not passive.

While the project may include some sketches, drawings or photographs, the requirement for some analysis excludes the possibility of engineers, architects or architectural technologists submitting a design portfolio or such like.

The building disciplines also welcomes technical research; the content of building degree programmes often involves problems related to such issues. There may be a perception, hopefully unfounded, that building students are less likely to take on the challenge of maths and/or science. If as a building student you can take on these challenges, you may decide to ‘go for it’. An issue such as climate change can be addressed from a non-technical or technical perspective. Non-technical research may be around human perceptions or behaviours, while technical work may involve scientific issues.

1.6 Qualitative or quantitative analysis?

The middle of the document should include some analysis – taking one element of a problem, breaking it down and establishing relationships or causes and effects. Robust analysis involves the application of some kind of academic tool, although some academic tools may be considered more robust than others. The way you go about collecting data for analysis, and the way you do the analysis, is one facet of a dissertation or project that can distinguish it from more conventional assessments or courseworks.

Often, analysis is the most challenging part of a dissertation or project. Students beginning to read about research are often faced with a myriad of new terms and complex ideas: ontology, epistemology, positivist, interpretivist and many more. This can make research very daunting and often very confusing for students new to the process – but do not panic! Knowledge and understanding of such ‘research paradigms’, while beneficial for an undergraduate dissertation, may not be essential. They do, however, become more relevant for MSc students, and certainly for those undertaking a PhD.

These terms all relate to philosophy and the questions around ‘what’ can be known about our world (ontology) and ‘how’ can we know it (epistemology). All research is based on such ideas. Much research is not ‘bothered’ by such thinking. Take for example testing concrete strength; this is an objective fact that can be measured empirically and scientifically – the underlying philosophy of this is well established and does not need restating. Research involving people is more complicated – it can be less objective and more subjective, and this is where research paradigms become more relevant. The terms objective and subjective can be used to illustrate research paradigms at the ends of what is termed the ‘research continuum’. Objective or positivist research lies at one end, and seeks to establish facts about the world. Subjective or interpretivist research lies at the other, and seeks to explain why