2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As globalization increases, the construction industry must embrace social equity, diversity, and inclusion in every aspect including sustainable infrastructure construction projects. Thus, a diverse workforce can bring innovative ideas and solutions to the table to address various challenges pertaining to sustainable and equitable infrastructure (SEI). However, construction management (CM) education hardly focuses on disseminating knowledge about SEI, particularly to students from historically marginalized communities such as African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and so on. This study argues that all construction professionals must have sufficient competencies to identify infrastructure inequity issues as well as address those issues while working in a project team thus contributing to SEI developments. Therefore, this research introduces the CM students to the existing infrastructure equity challenges and how to address these issues through leveraging Envision infrastructure sustainability rating system. To achieve this objective, the study implemented training in a cross-listed sustainable construction class in a Hispanic-serving institution located in the state of Florida. The training consisted of introductory lectures on key topics including social inequity, gentrification, infrastructure inequity, equitable access to infrastructure, sustainable infrastructure rating system, and Envision rating system. The study conducted a pre-survey to record the pre-established knowledge of the participants about social inequity and the importance of SEI systems. Furthermore, the study conducted a post-survey of the participants following the training. The pre and post-survey data were analyzed using the McNemar test which indicated that such training could help the students to realize the existing infrastructure inequity issues and introduce them to the knowledge and skills to address and mitigate such issues through leveraging Envision rating system. Furthermore, the students presented various practical examples of infrastructure inequity problems which indicated that the training facilitated the students’ skills to identify such issues. This study fostered the understanding of the CM students including students from marginalized communities of the importance of infrastructure equity as well as helped them in equipping with the knowledge and guidance needed to create an SEI system.