Professor Bell’s inaugural lecture at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington on 19 March, titled Learning by doing: five lessons from failure in life, university, and the built environment, will share the hard-won lessons from which she has wrought many successes in her career to date.
Professor Bell says, “I've learnt a lot by doing. That's why I'm in this role as a professor of practice, rather than for an academic body of work. That's what the Construction programme is going to be about also—learning by doing.”
The new Construction programme and chair at Victoria University results from the generosity of a major gift from Sir Mark Dunajtschik and Dame Dorothy Spotswood, with the Sir Mark Dunajtschik PhD Scholarship in Construction set to further support research into grunty industry challenges.
As a leading advocate for sustainable and innovative building who previously led Building Institute Aotearoa, Professor Bell’s strategic appointment bridges the gap between construction sites and the lecture theatre. To build the Construction Bachelor’s and Master’s, she is leveraging her industry knowledge and connections to design future-fit learning and research opportunities.
She hopes to boost the building and construction sector over time by schooling her students in the skills that industry has said it most needs—skills that will drive an increase in digital, manufacturing, and sustainable innovation, to transform the sector’s agility and energy efficiency.
Professor Bell is animated about the task at hand: “I get energised by something in start-up mode, so it’s an exciting time. Construction in New Zealand is in a downturn, and many talented people have gone offshore to chase work. So, it’s the perfect time for new learners to enter or professionals to upskill—we’ve made it super-easy to study part-time alongside fulltime work through block courses in the Master’s or through smaller certificates and diplomas.”
Delivering her first lecture in the School of Architecture will mean coming full circle for the Wellingtonian, who graduated there with a Bachelor of Architecture with Honours and a Master’s degree. Professor Bell received a 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award, and as Adjunct Professor mentored students and launched the Design and Business course, opening up more career options for students to apply their creative problem-solving approaches.
Completing her undergraduate degree, however, took longer than she initially planned—two years into it, she discovered Queenstown and left study to focus on high-performance snowboarding. The next seven years turned into back-to-back winters between the Southern Alps and Canada as she competed internationally and started businesses in snow apparel and snowboard coaching. She was the first New Zealand Olympian in the sport, representing the country at the 1998 Winter Olympics—as, she notes, "Before before current Olympians like Zoi Sydoski-Synott were even born!”
Experiences like having to fundraise her own way to the Olympics in Nagano, Japan while training brought invaluable insights and learnings, so she and her School of Architecture colleagues are committed to maximising work-integrated learning to give students real-world knowledge. Live construction sites will be classrooms, while back on campus a revolving door of industry guests will forge a dynamic learning environment.
“Rigorous face-to-face consultation with industry representatives is verifying every learning module so our young people will be absolutely industry ready. We know we’re teaching them the content industry wants them to know. We’re calling this our 'fundamentals + future-proofing' approach.”
The toolbelts of her students will not be filled with hammers and spanners, however. Alongside the digital-first tools like tablets that they’ll use onsite in future roles such as design manager, sustainability manager, project manager, and health, safety and wellbeing manager, she’ll be introducing a cutting-edge set of interpersonal tools to equip them for success in the most innovative construction workplaces.
She terms these tools “strong skills”—an intentional renaming of soft skills because of her belief in their criticality to success—and they include empathy, teamwork, and communication. Their purpose includes greater collaboration at the construction site to enhance worker wellbeing and greater understanding of indigenous methods.
“Construction's half about the technique and half about the people onsite and how we manage them and how we treat each other. We urgently need to change the culture in construction because of its high mental health tolls, suicide rates and injury statistics.
“Our tech-savvy graduates and researchers will be the ones driving the digital, manufacturing and sustainable innovation that’s needed to transform construction as we know it, to make the sector safer, smarter, lower carbon and more energy efficient.”
Resilience is another vital life skill Professor Bell has honed, particularly in 2012 when juggling the release of her book Kiwi Prefab, and a related museum exhibition at Puke Ariki, while parenting a newborn and a preschooler and supporting a bereaved husband.
Her groundbreaking research into how offsite construction can address housing shortages and sustainability in New Zealand led to a mandate from industry to found and head a new peak body for innovative construction, PrefabNZ.
Professor Bell now runs an innovation consultancy focused on the built environment. She has also recently stepped into the role of board chair of Crown Infrastructure Delivery and the onto the board of the New Zealand Green Building Council. Previous governance roles include chairing the New Zealand Construction Industry Council and Urban Plus Group, with directorships including BRANZ, ConCOVE, Abodo Wood, Seaview Marina, and the National Association of Women in Construction.
Learn more about Professor Bell including her research interests.
Register to join Professor Bell for her Inaugural Professorial Lecture at 5.30 pm on Thursday 19 March, in VSLT1 at our Te Aro campus, 139 Vivian Street, Te Aro, Wellington.