Thursday, March 28, 2013

MSc PMBE: Study Week March 2013

Full-time and distance-learning students on the MSc Project Management in the Built Environment came together on campus last week for their second Study Week of the 2012-13 session. The first day was spent on a field trip to the development site of the New Bodleian Library Building - to be renamed the Weston Library when it opens in 2015. Take a look at the Bodleian Library website for more information on the development, including some facts and figures about the demolition phase - which lasted for 12 months and saw 84km of shelving removed. Photos by Franco Cheung and Esra Kurul.



On top of the new Weston Library 

Scaffolding and spires

Take your own tour of the new Weston Library:





On the second day (Tuesday 19 March) the students attended a lecture on Public-Private Partnerships and Private Finance Initiatives given by guest speaker, Andrea Martinez of Sinloc. After lunch and a revision session with Nick Spencer-Chapman (for the Project Planning and Procurement module), the students were joined by a number of alumni who had been invited to celebrate five years of the MSc Project Management in the Built Environment with an afternoon and evening exploring the developments taking place at Oxford Brookes. Students and alumni were taken on a tour of the new teaching and learning building (currently under construction) and this was followed by a talk from the Project Director, Ian Russell.


Preparing to go on site...

...looking out rhrough the side windows...

...looking into the middle of the space

Those side windows from the outside

Visit the Space to Think page of our website for your own virtual tour of the new building.

The day finished with a tour of the Abercrombie extension (the new bit) and a Q&A session with Yannis Roussos, Associate Director of Capital Projects at Oxford Brookes and also the architect behind the new building. Students, alumni and staff had some time to celebrate, chat and reminisce about the last five years over drinks, nibbles and cupcakes. There will be more about five years of the MSc PMBE in a future blog post.


Yannis Roussos talks about the building (taken from the green glass bridge)

Wednesday 20 March was a freezing cold day. The students took part in a brick-laying exercise down at the Workshop (led by Mark Austin, and part of the Technology and Design Management module). I took some photos.

Mark Austin - making it look easy


Mixing...

....building...

...and more mixing.

Taking it down again at the end (those bricks can be used again!)

Thursday was still cold, but this time the sessions were all indoors. Esra Kurul (Programme Leader) facilitated two sessions on Negotiation. These were followed by a session on Town and Country Planning and a CIOB Guest Lecture in the evening given by Dr Martin Barnes CBE. Dr Barnes has been responsible for a number of developments in project management technique now widely used. One of the better known is the New Engineering Contract (the NEC). The NEC is the only standard contract system to be designed to stimulate application of modern, collaborative project management techniques around all the organisations involved in a project and to shrink the likelihood of disputes.

The week finished with sessions on Project Planning and the MSc Dissertation (which is getting ever closer).

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