ABSTRACT
Everybody is a customer; we are customers. There is a case for fostering a form of transcended Quality Management culture in construction education and in the broader construction industry.
This paper, based on a literature review and on case study research examines Quality Management techniques and their focus on achieving satisfaction of the needs of the customer/user/client.
It is posited that to provide relevance in building education in the forthcoming years it is necessary to:
focus on the “customers” of building construction in order to properly define the appropriate strategies for learning in the construction discipline. and
establish that all participants (students, academics, constructors, end users) are customers, and
empower graduates to identify with, and exercise appropriate interrogation of, their customers.
The tools offered by Quality Management to achieve these aims are assessed, and their relevance to the customer focussed culture are compared with the results of case study research on the role of the building client.
