Failure of Constructed Facilities in Civil Engineering Curricula

Abstract

The responses to a survey of engineering course contents are summarized. In 1998, a questionnaire was sent to 238 Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) -accredited universities and 62 ABET-accredited civil engineering (CE) technical colleges across the United States. The questionnaire focused on the inclusion of failure awareness of constructed facilities in the CE education curriculum. Of the 300 questionnaires sent, 112 were returned. Survey results reveal that, although a majority of colleges recognize the importance and need of providing failure analysis topics in CE courses, they also feel the undergraduate curriculum to be already crowded. In addition, the respondents say that ABET should not establish an accreditation requirement regarding the subject. However, 37% of the colleges say that three or more lectures should be given on failure analysis, either integrated throughout the course or given in series all at once. More than half of the respondents believe that condition assessment and maintenance of constructed facilities is a topic that should be included in the CE undergraduate curricula. The cover letter and questionnaire from the survey are appended.