What Is Civil Engineering?

What is Civil Engineering?

What does a Civil Engineer do, exactly?

Civil engineering is the design and construction of public works, such as dams, bridges and other large infrastructure projects. It is one of the oldest branches of engineering, dating back to when people first started living in permanent settlements and began shaping their environments to suit their needs. 

Much of the physical infrastructure of our modern society is provided by Civil Engineers. They are also involved in many environmental areas such as the assessment of the impact large scale projects have on the environmental and the collection and treatment of sewage and indurtial wastes, pollution control, environmental control and resource protection and management. A Civil Engineer will work from an architect's drawings and consider whether the chosen materials for a particular building will be strong enough to hold a structure might affect its surroundings. It is the responsibility of the civil engineers to produce safe, economical and environmentally-sound structures. They must also find ways to deliver the infrastructure needed when there's little money in the pot to pay for it. Put simply, civil engineers have to come up with solutions to complex problems and implement them.

There are many different specialisms within civil engineering, including environmental, structural, municipal, transport and geotechnical. There are two types of civil engineering roles within the various specialisms. First as consultants who focus on design work and generally spend more time in the office or working with clients, and the second as contractors who are more involved with keeping an eye on the physical construction and are usually based on-site. Both are challenging environments, and all civil engineers are required to be innovative and logical individuals.

Today, the public is more likely to remember the names of great civil engineering projects than the names of the engineers who designed and built them. These include the Brooklyn Bridge (designed by John August Roebling and son Washington Roebling), the Hoover Dam (John L. Savage), the Panama Canal (John Frank Stevens) and the Golden Gate Bridge (Joseph Strauss and Charles Ellis). One notable exception is the Eiffel Tower, named after Gustave Eiffel, the French civil engineer whose company built it. 

Civil engineering is an exciting profession because at the end of the day you can see the results of your work, whether this is a completed bridge, a high-rise building, a subway station, or a hydroelectric dam.

https://www.theguardian.com/careers/what-does-civil-engineer-do

http://civil.columbia.edu/what-civil-engineering

http://www.livescience.com/47612-civil-engineering.html

https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/civil-college/what-civil-engineering