Role-Playing for Group Learning of Law in Engineering and Construction Programs

Lawyering is much more than “winning” or “losing” a case. In real-life scenarios, effective lawyering involves the application of legal knowledge and skill in a practical manner, choosing among opposing choices and positions, with a view to achieving or impacting the goals of the client as ultimately pursued. In the case of construction professionals, the practical application of knowledge and skills to find the best solutions to construction problems encountered by their clients is no less important. Construction professionals need to be able to handle the challenges imposed by real-life construction problems, which usually call for solutions by a combined and balanced use of technical knowledge, management skills, and legal principles. Doing this can be complicated. Teaching this does not make it easier. Hence, how best to deliver a course that can bring about interactions among the technical, management, and legal knowledge and considerations in solving the daily workplace problems is a real-life challenge to most construction law educators. Further, recent developments in the construction industry all demonstrate a growing need for construction professionals to apply laws in dealing with construction problems on a daily basis. Experience of legal educators and trainers shows that role-playing helps in injecting realism into group learning in the study of construction project management, a subject that calls for the practical combination and application of technical, management and legal knowledge to common construction industry scenarios.