Nurturing Future Talents
Student Engagement
I started my journey with CIOB last August and I am delighted to be part of an amazing Qualification Liaison Manager’s (QLM) team. As a QLM in China, I see myself as the bridge builder between CIOB and academia since I play a significant role in maintaining and developing partnerships with higher institutions and collaborating with China and education directorate colleagues together, to carry out strategic education engagement model objectives and promoting CIOB qualifications to students and academics.
Before I joined CIOB, there were three CIOB training centres established in Tongji University, Tianjin University and Chongqing University to deliver ‘International Construction Management’ certificate courses in order to support candidates to meet membership eligibility. It is clear that these three training centres made a great contribution to our member growth in the past decade and the most stable cooperation we had with universities.
However, our engagements with educators and students are quite feeble in China. In the past seven months, while I was working on renewing our partnership with universities, I planned a couple of student engagement events. The ‘student ambassadors engagement’ event I held was the very first time CIOB student members in China had a cross-institution networking opportunity. It allowed student ambassadors to play a school representative role to informally share their school’s teaching principle and talent cultivation to their peers and experiences and ideas regarding the operation of CIOB student centres. It was heartwarming to hear one student ambassador’s story with CIOB, “Now I stepped into the construction industry for 3 months, however, I’m never going to forget that day I bought my first suit to attend the CIOB west China members’ forum and talk to the industry leaders who I thought I’d never had chance to meet.’’ It somehow expressed that CIOB plays an essential role in his career development. The event was very successful and I will continue to provide student engagement events or programs to bring academia and the industry together in order to develop future talents in the building environment.
Future Talent Investment: China National Talent Plan
President Xi addressed that “Education, science and technology, and human resources are the foundational and strategic pillars for building a modern socialist country in all respects. We must regard science and technology as our primary productive force, talent as our primary resource, and innovation as our primary diver of growth” in The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This must bring all sectors’ attention on investment in talents for China’s commitment to modernisation. With the rapid development of technology innovation, China is aimed to cultivate integrated international talents and prepare strong workforce to close the future skill gap.
CIOB Student Festival: The glue to hold global students together
As per the talent plan, I believe CIOB could make great contribution as we have a mission on “push forward innovation” and “strength talent across the CIOB global community”. The CIOB Student Festival is a supportive tool to achieve the goal. This is what I found from the 2023 Student Festival; it provided our future talents a platform to keep up with the industry trends and develop international vision by learning the best practices and research from industry leaders and educators across the globe. Even though the event is virtual, the Q&A sessions running after each keynote speakers’ speech gave students opportunities to ask questions in real-time. Most students could benefit from the coaching sessions to improve employability skills and have guidelines on how to come up with career goals. Next year, I will continue promoting the Student Festival nationwide, to have more student members audiences participate to align to the national talent plan, and invite more experts to share insights on the China construction industry and the professional opportunities for career development in China.
If you’re reading this and are based in the China region, you can reach out to me via my email address: [email protected]