Transcript for the video: Postgraduate Construction Management
Arezoo Shirazi (00:16):
Hi everybody. Welcome to our UTS Online Event for Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma of Construction Management.
Arezoo Shirazi (00:26):
This is Arezoo, I’m the course Director of the program. Let’s just wait for a couple of seconds, maybe a minute so we can have everyone enter the webinar and then we can start from there.
Arezoo Shirazi (01:07):
Great. So let’s first start with a short introductory video on the program, and then I’ll go from there.
Catherine Killen (01:23):
Hi, I’m Catherine Killen. I’m the head of school of the UTS School of Built Environment.
Catherine Killen (01:28):
Welcome to UTS. The Degree from the UTS School of Built Environment will enable you to have a rewarding career and make a positive impact on society.
Catherine Killen (01:37):
Our courses prepare you for careers in planning, property development, property investments, project management, and construction. Our courses are internationally accredited. They’re taught by experts with experience and industry connections.
Catherine Killen (01:53):
We are here to answer your questions about studying at UTS and we hope to see you here.
Arezoo Shirazi (02:08):
Great. So before we start, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands our City campus, now stands.
Arezoo Shirazi (02:20):
I would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.
Arezoo Shirazi (02:28):
This session will be recorded. We will only record audio on the screen share. We will not be recording any video input from you. Any further information that you provide during this session is optional and might be captured to be shared for further teaching and learning purposes to share questions and responses with the broader community or to build an online text catelogue of questions for other prospective students.
Arezoo Shirazi (03:06):
Further to this, the recording of this session may be published online and you may withdraw your consent for this at any time by contacting the email here, if you want.
Arezoo Shirazi (03:24):
Just a little bit of a housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions during today’s webinar, please type them into the Q and A box in your Zoom control panel. You can see it as a Q and A box, and we’ll do our best to answer the questions along the way.
Arezoo Shirazi (03:48):
I have Jess in the chat box and she’ll be covering the questions. You’ll put your post there and we hope we can answer all your questions as we move forward.
Arezoo Shirazi (04:10):
Graduate Certificate in Construction Management and also Graduate Diploma in Construction Management are the two courses that we are looking at today and effectively the certificate is the first half of the diploma, which we will look at in the following slides.
Arezoo Shirazi (04:32):
Typical Course Participation. The reason this program exists is to provide a pathway for students who have construction experience, but not necessarily the qualification. So quite a lot of prospective students and students who enrolled last year have been onsite for five plus years and they need to sort of put this knowledge gained through experience in the qualification. That’s why this was an attractive program to them. The other stream of students, we find are those who have qualifications such as a Bachelor Degree in another industry, and it could be Architecture, it could be Design. They look into transition into the construction industry. So basically these are the typical participants of our program.
Arezoo Shirazi (05:33):
Here is the Course Structure for the Graduate Certificate. This course was designed for the working students in mind. So the subjects are being delivered in Block Mode now. So this means that you can take the subject [inaudible 00:05:53], engage with the course content, generally undertake a lot of preparations for the assessment during that session. Then there is not a whole bunch of homework and similar to undergrad programs. So basically it’s very much designed to coming engaged to the course content, prepare for the assessment, and then once the class time is over, you can go back to your usual life. But you will have usually one or two projects to cover at your final assessment. So generally this is [inaudible 00:06:35] our courses off our subjects. As you can see in this table here, these are subjects for the Spring 2021, and also for Autumn 2022.
Arezoo Shirazi (06:51):
We are now in transition to bring all the classes back on campus. As you can see here, there’s only one subject in this Spring, which will still be online, the remaining will be on campus. All other subjects from 22 on are all planned for on-campus deliveries.
Arezoo Shirazi (07:15):
Let’s look at the subjects briefly. The first subject is Construction Cost Planning and Control. You can see the exact dates here. It’s basically Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday over a week in August and a week in September. Time, Quality and Risk Management again, to Friday and Saturday in August. The other two subjects that Construction Technology and Regulation is planned for Autumn 2022, which is basically to Friday and Saturday in March and April and also Construction Management, to Saturday and Sunday in early May and late May.
Arezoo Shirazi (08:05):
The schedule for the subjects Autumn are not 100% fixed, but they most probably will stay as is, but there could be a little bit of a change as we are far away from there. You will definitely be informed prior if that happens and also it will still stay definitely in the Block Mode sessions.
Arezoo Shirazi (08:31):
So moving to the courses, [inaudible 00:08:37] Graduate Diploma, these are basically the additional subjects for Graduate Diploma that you need to take in addition to the Graduate Certificate for Spring 2021 and also for Autumn 2022. Three subjects and also an elective that you can choose. These are also all in the Block Mode as well. So currently the Graduate Diploma subjects are shared with the Master Project Management Students, but all the examples on case studies are construction focused. So looking at the subjects, we have them Managing Project Contracts and in Spring 2021, you can see it’s basically planned for a whole week, like Tuesday to Friday, all day. And then it’s done. Project Integration Management. Again, it’s a block of Tuesday to Friday, a whole week in October and then into Autumn, 2022 Project Communications, HR and Stakeholders. It’s planned for a Saturday and a Sunday. Then Elective, depending on which class you’ll choose, you can work on that schedule for that.
Arezoo Shirazi (10:06):
In terms of Entry Requirements into this course, effectively we will look at a bachelor’s degree aligned with the minimum of a year relevant work experience in construction industry. If you don’t have the bachelor degree, we will look at some other type of supplementary evidence of your experience and qualifications that may be recognized as an equivalent to a bachelor’s degree.
Arezoo Shirazi (10:34):
For the other stream, without qualification, you look at minimum of five years relevant work experience. I must stress that these are the two main entry requirements, but if you think you are close to one of them, I still encourage you to submit your application because all the applications are being individually assessed. So effectively, we are looking to see that you’ve got the capacity to succeed in the subjects. So for example, if you’ve got two and a half years of industry experience with no other qualification, we probably will think it might be a bit too much for you. But if you have closer to five years and you’ve got some other supporting experience we they may still consider that. Even after you submit, we still may request for supplementary documents or more evidence if you are not in the two main categories.
Arezoo Shirazi (11:44):
In terms of the other stream, if you’ve got the degree and you might have just started working with a construction firm, what we will look at then is to make sure that there’s someone within the frame that basically can assist you to make sure that shortcomings will be covered from your employer. That’s generally the idea that we have. If you can’t meet exactly one of these two requirements, again, I suggest you have a look, maybe submit your application and then maybe we will request for further evidence and you might still get the chance to enter.
Arezoo Shirazi (12:39):
One of the key allotments of this intake is the Commonwealth supported places or CSP, which is effectively saving around 75% of your tuition compared to the full-time domestic fee. There are basically a couple of key things to remember for this program, one is that it is available to domestic students for all undergraduate courses and small number of postgraduate courses, which in our case, it is only for the graduate certificate program.
Arezoo Shirazi (13:21):
You still have to pay the student contribution and which is around a $1,000 of fee for each subject. Basically you will pay $4,000 for the certificate in total. What’s important is that currently it’s only available for 2021, because you will only cover two subjects as a certificate in 2021. Basically you will need to pay the full tuition for the other two in Autumn. You will get some discount for this year. There are some residency requirements like being an Australian citizen or studying at least one subject contributing to your course within Australia or being a permanent visa holder or a New Zealand citizen and be a resident of Australia during this subject.
Arezoo Shirazi (14:28):
Some other paths that students take after receiving their graduate certificate or graduate diploma is to look into master’s qualifications. The UTS Master of Project Management is a good option for you, which you can take through taking an additional four subjects. It really depends on you and really need to make sure that you take the appropriate elective. For that, you need to liaise with the Master of Project Management course director, to make sure you take the right elective and basically move towards that articulation.
Arezoo Shirazi (15:20):
There are certain key benefits specifically that Master of Project Management is accredited by the Project Management Institute, the GAC, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the RICS and also the Australia Institute of Project Management. Basically that covers all the information I have for you.
Arezoo Shirazi (15:52):
Here are the links to apply and have more information if you are interested for both Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma.
Arezoo Shirazi (16:03):
From here let’s move to the questions, and if there’re any questions you want to ask. Actually before moving to the questions, I just remembered, I forgot to request for a short poll. I just wanted to have a quick idea of the background of the participants. I’m mainly referring to these two requirements and wanted to see where you are sitting in comparison to these two criteria. If, you can just take one minute to answer this question that will give us a good idea of a where we are sitting at.
Arezoo Shirazi (17:06):
I have five participants, any other ones? For the new comments, as I said, we have basically two criteria for admission. One is having other qualifications I’m planning to transit, to construction industry. The other one is, have construction industry experience. I need the qualification through this subject, and if you are just none of the above, you can just choose the [inaudible 00:17:39] option.
Arezoo Shirazi (17:39):
Okay. Sounds great. So I can see a bit of a half, half distribution, so that’s good to know that we have both types of participants in this webinar. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for participating. So let’s go to the Q and A session and see what we have there.
Arezoo Shirazi (18:14):
So how do you apply for a CSP? So for the CSP, the link is provided here for you. So basically when you go through the whole application process, there’s an option for you to choose either you want to apply or be included in the CSP as well or not, but you can also go to this link and learn more about the details, but generally that’s somehow embedded in the application process.
Arezoo Shirazi (18:54):
Will you send slides back to us? Will you send a slide pack out? I believe so. Yes. I will send the slides.
Arezoo Shirazi (19:12):
I’m a UTS International, postgraduate student in Structural Engineering. I’m currently on Bridging Design. Am I still eligible to apply for the diploma or do I have to serve my visa? I think you should be eligible. Because you are currently in a valid visa in Australia, you should even be eligible to apply for the CSP. So I don’t see any issue on that. I assume because you’ll be a student, your visa will be kind of extend but I’m not 100% sure on that. If you can just email me, I can follow that up in more detail, but I don’t see any issue at the moment.
Arezoo Shirazi (20:10):
I can’t select or copy the link. It’s in a picture. I will ask Jess to forward the slides to everyone. So no issue on that. That’s all right. You will have the links. Easiest way is to just take a screenshot of this slide but again, you need to type it. That’s why I will ask Jess just to send it to all the participants that we have today.
Arezoo Shirazi (20:54):
Okay, one more here. All the resources will be available following the session. Yes. You can also send any further questions to us. The email is provided in the chat box for you. That’s all good. Any other questions? Any concerns? Do I not have like a one minute to digest the whole idea?
Arezoo Shirazi (21:46):
So, again, as I said, make sure you are on top of the schedules, you attend on campus and just follow with the instructors. That’s easy. And because they’re in Block Mode, it’s very easy to work around with your employer. So, that should be all good. Here are the other links in case you wanted to have a screenshot.
Arezoo Shirazi (22:22):
Okay. So I don’t see any other questions. So read that and I think we can end the webinar and thank you for joining. Let me see. Yeah. Thank you for joining. Please feel free to get in touch if needed and let us know if there was any further questions to that. Thank you all.