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Infrastructure, Innovation and Sustainability (940N1)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

Infrastructure-systems provide the foundation for a large proportion of modern economic activity. Such systems enable people, resources, energy and information to move around the world. The production and operation of infrastructure presents significant policy and managerial challenges as it is typically organisationally complex and requires a variety of public and private organisations to work together to plan, design, build and operate it. While the physical and information infrastructure of modern societies is very diverse, infrastructure sectors, such as transport, communications, energy, water and waste, and oil and gas, as well as the physical assets of modern societies (such as schools, hospitals, sports facilities, etc.), all share common problems, creating the possibility of learning across sectors. By adopting a business model focus, this course enables such cross sector learning.

This course explores innovation in infrastructure from a variety of public, private and civil society perspectives to produce an integrated understanding of how innovation takes place and which tools and techniques can be used to understand and improve the generation and operation of modern infrastructure. The course is focused on providing the skills and knowledge required for careers in strategically important infrastructure industries and projects involving clients, architects, engineers, contractors, government agencies, users and other stakeholders. The skills, knowledge and business-model focus of the course, together with the emphasis on learning across sectors, will generate transferable skills that will be valuable to anyone interested in the management and regulation of large complex organisations in a wide range of settings.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 44 hours of contact time and about 106 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.