Critical skills for the implementation of green infrastructure

The evaluation and development of an education programme is an iterative process as it seeks to meet the demand for skills and knowledge needed to satisfy any new or emerging occupational demand. One such relatively new issue is the concept of Green Infrastructure combining non-exclusive interests of the built environment professions such as planners, surveyors, architects and landscape architects. This paper addresses the question of what these skills are, how they are recognised as critical to the occupation and who leads this process of creating a skill set for a given occupation. It then questions the prevailing arguments concerning the existence of —critical— skills. A study was conducted to determine what graduate skills and knowledge are expected by professionals working within the field of Green Infrastructure. This provided a —basket— of knowledge-based skills pertinent to their jobs. There is a pursuit of ideal, so-called, —critical— skills and knowledge to incorporate in education processes. For practical reasons there is also a tendency to produce a ready —recipe— of the skills required for a potentially successful graduate. This leads to the question of whether is it possible to establish such a set of critical skills/knowledge necessary the meet emerging needs such the concept of Green Infrastructure. The aim of this paper is to examine a developed set of skills which are required by professionals for the implementation of Green Infrastructure, and then answer the question as to whether the provided set of skills is a set of critical skills.