摘要：Higher education institutions in the UK increasingly have to engage with industry, with government reports such as the Lambert Review (2003) and more recently the Leitch Review (2006) highlighting the necessity for academia and industry to collaborate to keep up to date with rapidly changing industry requirements. This is evident within the built environment sector with seminal UK government reports such as the Fairclough report (2002). Previously, some of this engagement has been seen as somewhat ‘shallow’ with few academics and/or institutions having a deep and continuing engagement with practitioners. The Construction Knowledge Exchange, is one of 22 national knowledge exchanges in the UK which aim to develop good practice in knowledge exchange between institutions and businesses within a specific sector through the establishment of innovative partnerships.Within the West Midlands region of the UK, a new model has been developed through the Construction Knowledge Exchange initiative centred around Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Action Learning, which provides a stage driven method towards deep and continuing engagement between industry and academia. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the model implemented and a comparison of the Accelerating Change in Built Environment Education and Construction Knowledge Exchange approaches to industry engagement through the use and analysis of case studies. The case studies presented highlight the considerable success achieved through providing CPD training to Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) thus providing an introduction to university capabilities. Action Learning is implemented as part of the CPD approach allowing SMEs to identify their specific requirements for business improvement. Based on the outcomes of action learning, practitioners are linked with undergraduate and postgraduate students and research staff which has presented cost effective solutions to business research and development needs and provided students with opportunities to experience real projects and, potentially, further employment opportunities.
