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A Difference Of Opinion Between Industry And Acedemia

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SOFT SKILLS IN CONSTRUCTION: A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION BETWEEN INDUSTRY AND ACEDEMIA
INTRODUCTION
Every function of the construction industry is being influenced by technological advancement and more activities in a construction project are now aided by a software. Emerging technologies like Building Information Modelling (BIM), Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing and others have enabled the industry to not only improve tremendously in terms of productivity, but also in terms of quality through better coordination among multiple project participants, Training, Visualization and clash detection (Ahmad et al. 1995). Moreover, it is the adoption of these technologies and the relative skills of contractors in these that …show more content…

Utilizing BIM enabled integrated project delivery presents many challenges for the project management team because BIM enable many new channels for effective communication and collaboration and the choice of the right tool at the right time becomes difficult even for people with a knowledge of the benefits of BIM (Rekola et al. 2010).Moreover, integration is about managing people and getting them to work together to achieve something more than the sum of parts. To do this, the project manager requires leadership, motivation and teambuilding. It may also involve trust building among project participants and conflict resolution (Fewings, Peter 2012. Construction Project Management: An Integrated Approach (2nd Edition). All the above mentioned skills can be classified as soft skills of the project manager. Hence, in order to succeed in today’s dynamic industry, any individual wishing to enter the industry, should not only possess core technical skills, but also a diverse set of soft skills.(Ahn and Kwon 2010) .
“The competencies are classified as hard and soft skills. Soft skills generally refer to a person’s emotional quotient. The cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, managing people, leadership, etc. that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills are different

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