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Buildling creative and problem solving skills to help engineers and other humans respond the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis.
Teaching, training and facilitation that builds meaning from experience and ideas.
Founded by Oliver Broadbent

About

Our vision at Constructivist is for engineers to have the creative, problem-solving and self-starting skills they need to tackle the ever more complex challenges that society faces.

Our mission is to train the next generation of engineers to identify problems that need solving, find creative solutions to those problems and to seek out the skills they need to deliver those solutions.

Our approach is to design teaching and training which is:

  • Inspirational – when learners are inspired the possibilities are endless
  • Problem-based – in which engineers develop the ability to identify and solve their own problems
  • Focused on building creativity skills – providing a systematic approach for engineers to build their creativity
  • Action-based – paying particular attention to how new skills are built in daily workflows.

Founder + Director – Oliver Broadbent

Oliver Broadbent – photo credit: Steve Cross
Oliver Broadbent works with leaders, teams and organisations to help them build their creativity. He trains engineers and architects in conceptual design, and works with universities and colleges to create innovative new approaches to engineering education.
Oliver is a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in Experience-led learning at Imperial College London. He writes and podcasts about engineering, creativity and practical philosophy – read more at eiffelover.com

@eiffelover_

Oliver’s LinkedIn profile.

Services

We aim to empower engineers to tackle society’s big challenges by helping them develop high-functioning skills in the following areas:

  • Skills for responding to the climate and biodiversity emergency
  • Skills for problem-based learning and reflective working
  • Skills for creative thinking and conceptual design
  • Skills for facilitating great conversations.

To deliver these skills we offer:

  • Open training courses
  • Tailored in-house training
  • Consultancy services in creative thinking and training design
  • Curriculum design for universities
  • Workshop and event facilitation
  • Coaching for organisational leaders.

Selected projects

Conceptual Design Training for the Institution of Structural Engineers – we deliver a programme of face-to-face and online courses to support structural engineers in developing their conceptual design skills.

Get It Right Initiative – while at Think Up,  Oliver led the design and delivery of a £250,000 programme of training for the Get It Right Initiative, the first such programme of its kind, including face-to-face workshops, online material and video content.

Interdisciplinary Design for the Build Environment – Oliver delivers workshops in creativity and problem-based learning for this Cambridge masters programme.

Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at Imperial College – through this role Oliver is working with teaching staff to develop new approaches to teaching creativity and problem-based learning.

Arup Conceptual Design Mastery – Think Up collaborated with Arup to create this ground-breaking programme of training in conceptual design. Oliver led Think Up’s design and delivery work for this programme.