Vocational and Technical Education Journal

Construction industries are the first to acquire and explore new technologies; hence most of the industries are the first port of call for emerging technologies and serve for consultancy even in the development of technologies prior to emergence. This paper investigated the need for construction industries’ collaboration, its imperatives for sustainable emerging skill acquisition of building trades’ students of technical colleges in Enugu State. Survey design was used with structured questionnaire as instrument for data collection. 153 participants were purposively selected for the study from registered construction companies and NBTE accredited technical colleges in Enugu State. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics - percentages and mean – for research questions while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results revealed that there is a compendium of emerging technologies utilized in the construction industry that has neither been seen nor utilized in all the technical colleges within the state; also, the need for collaboration includes exposure to modern technologies for emerging skill acquisition, training opportunities for both teachers and students. However, bureaucracy and lack of interest on the part of the construction industries were part of the factors against collaboration of the two entities. Hence, there is need for a well formulated MoU for collaborations between construction industries and technical colleges, so as to enable the students’ acquisition of sustainable emerging technologies for employment and global competitiveness.

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