Integrating communication skills into civil engineering education

Potential employers of graduate civil engineers increasingly want candidates with well-developed communications skills, However, to help students in this regard, universities must find space in an already overcrowded syllabus. The solution proposed in this paper is to use development of communication skills as a focus for active learning assignments on the roles and responsibilities of practising civil engineers. The highly successful mock planning and disaster inquiries staged in recent years by civil engineering undergraduates at Queen's University in Belfast are put forward as examples of how this can be achieved.