ABSTRACT
Building and construction companies operate in environments where competitive advantage is of key importance. Competitive positions are enhanced by the ability of companies to use their staff to their optimum economic advantage. Building and Construction companies are therefore knowledge-based organisations, with a competence database comprising technical, professional, generic, inherent, enhanced and personal skills.
Continuing education implies that there is a relationship between the career of an individual and the ongoing educational process aimed at enhancing their performance. However learning and education are not one and the same, and learning can take place outside educational programmes. For construction industries education is often ‘applied’; it is designed and intended to be relevant to the industrial activity or sphere of activity that an individual or organisation is engaged in.
For managers, academics and lifetime learners a number of questions need to be posed and the proposed paper will examine the issues raised by the following questions:
What is the link between continuing education and succession planning in the construction industry?
How should cohort progression be viewed in the light of intake quality and dual qualification systems?
What do we intend by outcomes in continuing education systems, if they are systems?
What does continuing education and re-education comprise in terms of content and form?
Within the industry, what is the relationship between ‘knowledge’ and ‘organisation’?
Is competence to be defined in knowing how to do something, or is it how to recognise best/better practice?
Where does the learning base exist, and what is legitimate?
What is the balance of power between individuals, companies, academia and governments in the continuing education and re-education system?
Who should pay?
No single unique correct answers exist in response to any of these questions, but by raising these questions and providing some responses, a more general debate should be created, so that the industry can question and judge any assumptions it has made.
