Building Better for a Thriving Future: Accredited built environment programmes
The built environment shapes how we all live, work and move. Transforming how we design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure allows businesses to seize new opportunities, reduce risk and future-proof assets as part of an economy that uses space, materials and energy much more efficiently and effectively.
CISL’s Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment programmes explore the importance of building knowledge and leadership skills to drive real change through multiple professions and disciplines working together towards a better built environment.
The programmes are available as a part-time Master’s or Postgraduate Certificate, offered by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and supported by the Departments of Architecture and Engineering.
Delivering exceptional future-fit built environment projects requires the deep-skill discipline of many individuals sharing a collective vision and purpose. Our Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment programmes teach global best practices through project-based learning, with a focus on collaboration and leadership throughout.
It is truly interdisciplinary in the background of its staff, students and the areas it covers. The Master’s and Postgraduate Certificates are structured around emerging trends, opportunities, and challenges within the built environment such as sustainability and resilience, health and well-being, retrofit and reuse, energy efficiency and carbon, conservation and heritage, stakeholder engagement, political and regulatory landscapes.
The learning approach is highly interactive and designed to encourage reflection and debate. Students are supported by a team of expert assignment supervisors and dissertation supervisors. The speakers and facilitators are leading experts and practitioners from both academia and industry.
A key feature of the programme is the collaborative learning experience. The programmes facilitate shared learning between peers, and networking with an extensive range of contributors, together providing a rich learning environment.
Our courses aim to:
- Build awareness regarding current challenges and opportunities facing the built environment, such as sustainability, resilience, climate change, and rapid urbanisation.
- Equip professionals with the strategic decision-making, inventive problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration skills needed to respond to the challenges and opportunities.
- Develop skills in leadership, effective collaboration, and communication for action - particularly between clients, consultants, contractors, specialists and occupiers.
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The key themes of built environment programmes
The built environment is facing challenging global carbon reduction targets, affecting every area of the design and construction process, across public and private works. As a result, there is a phenomenal appetite for sustainability and environmental skills across every built environment role. Increasingly companies are aligning their business models and procurement processes with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
With a wide range of services and disciplines contributing to the built environment sector, inefficiencies of a fragmented workplace are a key drag on construction projects. While collaboration is frequent, interdisciplinary awareness and related management skills are seldom part of standard discipline-based education programmes and professional qualifications. High-impact leadership and seamless project management are needed. The rise of smart cities and technological transformation demands a broader, more connected ‘design-thinking’ professional.
These key themes, crucial for successful built environment projects of all types, form the basis of our programmes’ core modules:
- Leadership, professionalism and interdisciplinary practice
- Sustainability & resilience
- Innovation & technology
- Design thinking
- Research skills
Flexible part-time learning
Postgraduate Certificate
- 10 months, part-time
- Two week-long residential workshops in Cambridge
- Online modules delivered via a virtual learning environment
- Two individual assignments
- A group research assignment
- Course starts every September
Master’s
- Two years, part-time
- Six, week-long residential workshops in Cambridge
- Online modules delivered via a virtual learning environment
- Two individual assignments
- A group research assignment
- An individual research dissertation
- Scholarships and bursaries available
- Course starts every September
Professional accreditation
The Chartered Institution for Building Services Engineers
The Master’s is accredited by the Chartered Institution for Building Services Engineers as meeting the requirements for further learning.
Joint Board of Moderators
The Master’s is accredited by the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Highway Engineers and the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation as meeting the requirements for further learning and by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors under their project management pathway.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
The Master’s is accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors under their project management pathway.
