As part of their education, Civil Engineering students need exposure to the construction process. This is often accomplished through site visits, where the students may experience a variety of construction processes and structures, and can examine drawings and meet with various personnel to gain an appreciation of their role in the construction activity.

Providing appropriate opportunities for these visits to take place is not easy. Suitable sites are often a considerable distance from the educational establishment, site access may be difficult for the required number of students, access time may be restricted, key personnel may not be available, and access to various documents may not be possible. Unless regular visits are made over a period of time, the students will not experience the various phases that the construction project goes through. The University of Portsmouth is currently embarking upon a major capital building development programme involving the planned expenditure of c£42M over three years. This building programme represents a unique opportunity for our students to observe the whole construction process, over the duration of the contract.

The Department of Civil Engineering, together with other departments in the Faculty of the Environment, is currently "digitising" the construction process, to create an archive of reference material. This archive includes tender documents, specifications, drawings, time-lapse photographs and video clips of the construction, photographs of construction details, and interviews with various personnel.

The resulting massive database of multimedia reference material will be made available to students in a variety of ways, but most usefully in electronic form accessible remotely by students anywhere within the University across the computer network, and ultimately from anywhere in the world across the Internet.

This paper represents work in progress.

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