Civil Engineering Practice-led (Research)

A flexible route that allows qualified architects or engineering professionals to study for a PhD while working part-time.

Our current research areas include:

• architectural management

• BIM and collaborative technologies

• building conservation and upgrading

• climate change, sustainable development and environmental modelling

• design for building resilience

• design management and strategies

• digital design

• environmental impact of design and construction

• healthcare design

• low carbon and low energy building design

• the use of radical, low-carbon building materials and technologies

Study can reflect a company’s or individual’s interests and expertise and, ideally, will encompass both. The University also offers the potential for collaborative research in computing, psychology, management and other disciplines.

You will start this programme in October.
You may also start mid-year, subject to agreement with your supervisor and the Doctoral College.

Programme content
Learning

• Doctoral skills online

• Doctoral skills workshop

• Research project

• Seminars

• Supervisory team

Research content
Join a cohort of like-minded mid-career professionals carrying out applied research, and incorporating practice at the forefront of their disciplines.

As well as the chance to complete a course of doctoral study while maintaining your principal employment, you will gain:

• the internationally recognised title of ‘Dr’, emblematic of excellence in research standards and the generation of new knowledge

• demonstrable status as an expert in your field

• a PhD, increasingly seen as a passport into the upper echelons of senior management

• the opportunity to develop a career specialisation with commercial value

The company will gain:

• enhanced intellectual capital

• recognition through innovative practice

• bespoke, evidence-based research into the benefits of your innovations

• access to the research network of one of the UK’s leading research universities

• invitations to present to final-year students, potentially leading to recruiting some of the UK's best graduates

• four free places at all our departmental conferences and research events

• a way of offering staff an opportunity that will also benefit the practice’s strategic development interests

• recognition of its status as a research collaborator

• advertising space in the Department’s foyer (we attract c10,000 visitors a year, many of them influential in architecture and engineering)

• the appointment of a member of the practice as co-supervisor, where agreed

Your practice has to ensure that their employee can free up 500 hours a year for study linked to ongoing initiatives within the practice. As a first step, the practice and student should agree an area of research commitment that satisfies both parties' needs.

Both academia and practices increasingly rely on the quality of Bath's research, since the intellectual capital embodied in the staff of any firm or university is a key measure of competitive advantage.

Enabling a member of the team to take advantage of this route to a PhD is likely to enhance their status and success and, by association, the practice's.

Professional Development
Professional development is a crucial element of doctoral study, not only in supporting your research but also as part of your longer term career development. Our DoctoralSkills workshops and courses will help you build your skills and help you succeed in your doctorate.