The CIOB has launched a new construction game, aimed at encouraging a new generation of construction professionals through Minecraft.
“Craft your Future” is a construction game aimed at 12-14-year-olds that takes place in Minecraft and allows young learners to explore the methods and skills to become a construction manager, introducing them to a career in construction.
In a series of four free Minecraft Education Lessons, which can be downloaded by teachers anywhere and accessed via the Minecraft Education Platform, students encounter a variety of problems that reflect construction challenges in cities today.
The lessons take place in Newtown, a specially created virtual city in Minecraft, to design, plan, collaborate and build solutions that develop a sustainable future for all its citizens. Exercises also include real-life scenarios like the challenge of restoring Battersea Power Station.
Developed alongside the Gameworkshop from Denmark and the Danish Architecture Centre, each lesson runs between 3-6 hours where groups of students usually in teams of three or four collaborate across the lessons. The lessons cover four areas of construction: maintenance, restoration, new build and refurbishment.
With more than 400,000 UK construction workers set to retire between 2018 and 2023, the need to attract new construction professionals is imperative and the CIOB sees this new game as a way of inspiring a new generation.
Bridget Bartlett, deputy chief executive at the CIOB, said: “Combining Minecraft and a thorough curriculum for the teacher makes for a unique and immersive experience and will help reveal why the industry is important and why a career in construction can be so rewarding. There are 70 million people playing Minecraft and just like Lego it has the capacity to inspire and attract a new wave of construction managers into an ever-increasing digital industry.”
She adds: “What is exciting is that these young learners will not only have fun but also develop their communication, team working and mathematics skills; skills that construction has a high demand for.”
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