From left: Dr Zhenan Feng, Dr An Le, Dr Claire Flemmer.
The international awards, which attracted more than 2200 global entries across 15 award categories, are often referred to as the ‘Oscars of Education’. They celebrate cutting-edge projects, pedagogies and technologies that are transforming education for the better.
Both projects were from the School of Built Environment. The Capstone Partnership project in the Nurturing Employability category is led by Dr An Le and Dr Zhenan Feng, with input from Dr Ravindu Kahandawa, Dr Hennie Van Heerden, Dr Elrasheid Elkhidir, Dr Benjamin Ababio and past members Dr Priya Vishnu, Professor Regan Potangaroa and Dr Daniel Paes. The Inclusive Accessibility Through Partnerships project in the Power of Partnerships category is led by Dr Claire Flemmer.
The Capstone Partnership is a collaboration between the School of Built Environment and Naylor Love, Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest commercial builder. It is a strategic alliance designed to bridge the gap between tertiary education and industrial practice, integrating final-year construction management and quantity surveying students into mock commercial enterprises.
Massey’s academic team provides the pedagogical scaffolding, rigorous assessment benchmarks and milestone reviews that mirror real-world quality-assurance gates. Industry practitioners test commercial credibility and award recognition for teamwork, commercial quality and methodology. This structure instils a vital industry lesson early: technical expertise is ineffective without cross-disciplinary collaboration, shared accountability and clear communication. It embeds employer insight, authentic evidence of capability and direct professional contact into a credit-bearing final-year course.
The Inclusive Accessibility Through Partnerships project tackles the challenge that cities and communities should be inclusive for people with disabilities, by establishing strategic partnerships between disability advocacy groups, building practitioners and academics in Massey’s Master of Construction programme.
This project educates students on the main problems people with disabilities face when accessing buildings, and encompasses legal, audit tool and management aspects. With information on disability needs collected through a survey, building managers were provided with simple ways to make their existing buildings more accessible. One of the outcomes of this project was a petition to the New Zealand Government with recommendations for achieving improved accessibility and ongoing collaboration in the development of improved building accessibility standards.
The winners in the 2026 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Reimagine Education Awards will be announced in December at the QS showcase event in London.
The subject of Built Environment is currently ranked in the global top 150 and first in New Zealand in the latest QS Subject Rankings.
Learn more about the School of Built Environment.
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