Developing The Social Aspects Of Sustainable Facilities Management: A Multi-Country Summer School Project

Paper in proceeding, 2017

The introduction of sustainability asks for complex solutions and requires multidisciplinary competences that Facilities Management educations have to integrate. Whereas research has demonstrated that FM can play a central role in implementing sustainable solutions, it appears that practitioners don't have sufficient access to knowledge and tools to develop their practice efficiently. In particular, methods to integrate all the stakeholders and above all the users, indispensable to the success of these initiatives, seem missing. This paper presents the assessment of a summer school aiming at providing 35 students from three Scandinavian countries with a holistic understanding of sustainability including the users' perspective. We discuss the pedagogical challenges related to this kind of event as well as their potential contributions to develop tools of relevance for both educational and professional purposes. The summer school concept is building on Project-Based Learning. The supporting staff includes academic teachers, researchers and practitioners. The challenge is to create a pedagogical platform merging both academic and professional interests, methods and criteria for success. The material for this qualitative study are gathered through participant observations formal progress and assessment sessions. The summer school took place in March 2017 in Trondheim Norway, here we present our preliminary results.