MBA and M.S. in Construction Engineering and Management Dual Degree Master’s Program

The general superintendent, engineering staff and construction manager, in order to manage, schedule and complete the heavy construction project, must be aware of problems associated with the completion of the complex project. Problems associated with pile driving & shoring, excavation methods, tunneling, trenchless technology, and rock excavation are reviewed. Examples and case studies are discussed with alternate solutions reviewed based on site conditions and economic considerations.

This class introduces students to procedures for balancing key project constraints in the face of adversarial contractual arrangements, multiple prime, and single source contracting as well as externalities.

Various aspects of construction and safety techniques are discussed along with strategies for building a corporate culture of zero accidents, planning for high project safety performance, establishing accountability for safety, and maintaining a safety communication network.

Project success depends, largely, on the human side. Success in motivating project workers, organizing and leading project teams, communication and sharing information, and conflict resolution, are just a few areas that are critical for project success. However, being primarily technical people, many project managers tend to neglect these "soft" issues, assuming they are less important or that they should be addressed by direct functional managers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of project managers to the critical issues of managing people and to present some of the theories and practices of leading project workers and teams.

Executives make decisions every day in the face of uncertainty. The objective of this course is to help students understand how decisions are made, why they are often less than optimal, and how decision-making can be improved. This course will contrast how managers do make decisions with how they should make decisions, by thinking about how “rational” decision makers should act, by conducting in-class exercises and examining empirical evidence of how individuals do act (often erroneously) in managerial situations. The course will include statistical tools for decision-making, as well as treatment of the psychological factors involved in making decisions.

The study of marketing principles from the conceptual, analytical, and managerial points of view. Topics include: strategic planning, market segmentation, product life-cycle, new product development, advertising and selling, pricing, distribution, governmental, and other environmental influences as these factors relate to markets and the business structure.

Covers the general area of management of operations, both manufacturing and non-manufacturing. The focus of the course is on productivity and total quality management. Topics include quality control and quality management, systems of inventory control, work and materials scheduling, and process management.

Project success depends, largely, on the human side. Success in motivating project workers, organizing and leading project teams, communication and sharing information, and conflict resolution, are just a few areas that are critical for project success. However, being primarily technical people, many project managers tend to neglect these "soft" issues, assuming they are less important or that they should be addressed by direct functional managers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of project managers to the critical issues of managing people and to present some of the theories and practices of leading project workers and teams.

An interdisciplinary course which examines the elements of, and the framework for, developing and implementing organizational strategy and policy in competitive environments. The course analyzes management problems both from a technical-economic perspective and from a behavioral perspective. Topics treated include: assessment of organizational strengths and weaknesses, threats, and opportunities; sources of competitive advantage; organizational structure and strategic planning; and leadership, organizational development, and total quality management. The case method of instruction is used extensively in this course.

This course introduces students to fundamental soft skills, work techniques, and technologies employed by management consultants. Topics covered in this course include project scoping, creating statements of work, meeting facilitation, project planning, design of presentations and written reports, management briefs, and delivery of status reports. The course will improve students’ ability to present analyses of issues and organizational problems in a concise, accurate, clear and interesting manner from the perspective of a consultant. This course is designed to be taken prior to the experiential graduate courses in the School of Business, including MGT 809: Industry Capstone Project.

In this course students work on an industry project with a team of their peers under the supervision of a faculty advisor and industry mentor. Students will work on project tasks and manage client expectations while applying their disciplinary and technical knowledge to the project. In addition to the project-specific deliverables, students will produce a statement of work, present weekly project updates, and a final presentation and project report to management. This one to two-credit course is tied to the Industry Capstone Program in the School of Business. Students must first apply for a project before registering for this course.

This course introduces managers to the essence of business economics – the theories, concepts and ideas that form the economist’s tool kit encompassing both the microeconomic and macroeconomic environments. Microeconomic topics include demand and supply, elasticity, consumer choice, production, cost, profit maximization, market structure, and game theory while the Macroeconomic topics will be GDP, inflation, unemployment, aggregate demand, aggregate supply, fiscal and monetary policies. In addition the basic concepts in international trade and finance will be discussed.

This course will provide the student with the principles and techniques of financial and managerial accounting for technical organizations. The emphasis will be on the use of financial data for decision making. The basics of accounting will briefly be covered, with the major amount of time spent on ways to understand, analyze and use the data for decision making. Budgeting and analysis of performance, as well as, recognizing fixed and variable expenses are other key areas of financial management. Issues of valuation, time value of money, uncertainty and risk will be integrated in the material. The one-term course will make extensive use of the text by Weygandt et al (see below), supplemented by cases, exercises, homework and examinations. Emphasis will be on real-world, practical application of the tools of finance to management decision making.

This course covers the fundamental principles of finance. The primary concepts covered include the time value of money, principles of valuation and risk. Specific applications include the valuation of debt and equity securities as well as capital budgeting analysis, financial manager’s functions, liquidity vs. profitability, financial planning, capital budgeting, management of long term funds, money and capital markets, debt and equity, management of assets, cash and accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets. Additional topics include derivative markets.

Many managerial decisions - regardless of their functional orientation - are increasingly based on analysis using quantitative models from the discipline of management science. Management science tools, techniques and concepts (e.g., data, models, and software programs) have dramatically changed the way businesses operate in manufacturing, service operations, marketing, transportation, and finance. Business Analytics explores data-driven methods that are used to analyze and solve complex business problems. Students will acquire analytical skills in building, applying and evaluating various models with hands-on computer applications. Topics include descriptive statistics, time-series analysis, regression models, decision analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization models.

This course deals with the problems of managing a project. A project is defined as a temporary organization of human and nonhuman resources, within a permanent organization, for the purpose of achieving a specific objective. Both operational and conceptual issues will be considered. Operational issues include definition, planning, implementation, control and evaluation of the project; conceptual issues include project management vs. hierarchical management, matrix organization, project authority, motivation and morale. Cases will include construction management, chemical plant construction and other examples.

A course of lectures dealing with the design, performance and quality control of earth supporting structures. It includes an outline of the available methods of evaluating slope stability by field studies, numerical computer analysis and hand calculations. Finally, the last portion of the course covers the principles involved in the design and construction of earth and rockfill dams including such topics as soil compaction, hydraulic fill dams, design criteria, seepage control, slope stability analyses, seismic design and case history studies.

This lecture course covers civil engineering materials, their properties, and their construction use. Specifics to be discussed include physical and mechanical properties of steel, concrete, asphalt, wood, plastic, timber, and soil. Coverage of ASTM standard tests covering these properties is also presented.

This course is a study of the elements and concepts of temporary supportive structures involved with heavy construction process. Topics of discussion will include codes, construction, cofferdams, temporary sheeting and bracing, falsework and shoring, and concrete form design.

This course provides an overview of construction project scheduling concepts and computer applications employed in construction including scheduling logic, critical path method, resources management, progress monitoring, and probabilistic scheduling methods. Learners will discover the key project scheduling techniques and procedures including; how to create a network diagram, how to define the importance of the critical path in a project network, and defining project activities float. Also covered are the fundamentals of Bar Charts, Precedence Diagrams, Activity on Arrow, PERT, Range Estimating, and linear project operations and the line of balance.