The MPRINCE - Master in Integrated Design in Building Construction, is a postgraduate course with a duration of 2 Years/4 semesters (120 ECTS), essentially directed at students already graduated - and, even, professional activity - in the areas of Civil Engineering and Architecture, which aims to recreate, within the framework of a specialized academic training, the most efficient model of multidisciplinary development of building projects, referred as IPD Integrated Project Delivery.

Using a case study as a basis, students, organized in working groups, always with engineers and architects, will explore the knowledge and skills essential in the various relevant areas of building design – thermal and acoustic behaviour, building facilities, construction technologies, fire safety, sustainability, BIM, management of project, construction works and building – which will be aggregated and catalysed in an Integrated Design work in which the various professional perspectives and regulatory and technological constraints will have to be balanced and coordinated in order to respond to a challenge proposed by a real customer.

Among the several industrial activities, the Construction Industry is probably the one where, to obtain a final product, the number of expertise and technical components to be involved is the largest, with input from a wide number of professionals covering an extensive scope of scientific areas in the fields of engineering and architecture. Also, the fact that the products of this industry – in particular buildings – are expected to last for several decades, leads to the need of an increased attention and concern about how they are materialized.

This is reflected by the increasing number of connections and interrelations of all involved matters and their impact in the built environment, often translated in related codes that need to be complied with. Therefore, awareness of the essence and application of the diverse expertise linked in a global construction project is fundamental, as well as the skills and competences needed to contribute for an effective management of those with the aim of conceiving, designing and building sustainable constructions.

MPRINCE aims to be a space where the distance between the views of architecture and engineering, still recurrent in the professional environment, will fade leading its students to understand the greatest efficiency, transversal to all expertise, which results from an integrated approach of the processes that go through the stages of inception, design, construction and use, obtaining the skills and tools necessary to achieve this goal.

As MPRINCE is intended for students already with a degree, the schedule will be set in such a way as to facilitate that it may be followed in parallel with some part-time professional activity.

The language for the course will be English or Portuguese, in this last case if all students speak Portuguese.

After a successful completion of the 2-year programme (120 ECTS), the student will achieve the Diploma of Master in Integrated Building Design and Construction.