Civil Engineering is the oldest engineering discipline, which is practically as old as human civilization. Until about may be 100-150 years ago, there was no clear distinction between a civil engineer and an architect, but as the needs developed for designing the function and aesthetics of structures vs. their actual load carrying mechanisms, architecture and civil engineering began to go their separate ways, although they still interact all the time. When we said load carrying mechanism here, naturally most people will think a structure carrying a certain load such as a building or bridge carrying the weight, wind and earthquake loads. But actually, the term “load” can be regarded in a much broader sense, such as “demand”. For example for a highway, load not only means the weight of vehicles but also the traffic demand that the road must handle. For a marina, it means the number and type of boats that will dock there. For a seawall, it means the dynamic load from waves, ice, storms and the necessity to withstand all environmental effects at the coast. What we are trying to tell here is that, civil engineers design and build structures for our civilization, which will withstand and adequately handle everything that will be demanded from them, be it a building, bridge, dam, highway, tunnel, airport, harbor, stabilized slope, deep excavation, retaining wall, transmission pipeline, flood wall, aerial ropeway, roller coaster, offshore structure and many more….

Civil engineering is most often categorized as we will list here, but keep in mind that this is not a strict rule and it is possible to see slight differences in different contexts. Commonly, civil engineering branches can be listed as:

• Structural
• Geotechnical
• Water Resources
• Transportation
• Construction

Below we describe the ones listed above. But also be aware that, for example in the past, environmental engineering was part of civil engineering, or materials science (which is actually a course in civil engineering curriculums) is considered a part of structural engineer, as well as earthquake engineering which is also considered under the broader term of structural engineering and so on. But for general purposes and most commonly, the classification shown above is valid.

Structural:

Structural engineers mainly ensure that the structures they design withstand adequately the loads that are demanded from them. Here adequately means not only to be able to just resist the loads but also to ensure that certain limits are also respected while doing so, mainly, the deformation limits. For example you wouldn’t feel comfortable if you are on a high rise building and during every strong wind, it swung excessively, even if structurally this may totally be acceptable.

Structural engineers can design and oversee an entire projects, as well as specializing in certain components. For example one structural engineer can design a building and he can be the main structural engineer responsible from the project, and another may specialize in certain systems, such as exterior facade, which still require structural engineering input. The specialty structural engineers most often work for subcontractors, who are hired by general contractors who build the projects.

Geotechnical:

Geotechnical branch of civil engineering deals with soil mechanics, foundations, retaining structures, slopes, in order to mainly ensure that the structures we build on ground will firmly stand without undergoing excessive settlements. In addition they are responsible for stable slopes, excavations, and dealing with groundwater from foundation point of view. Geotechnical engineers perform tasks such as: conducting ground investigation, running field or laboratory tests to determine properties of foundation materials, preparing geotechnical reports, designing shallow or deep foundations, stabilized slopes, excavations, ground improvement, retaining structures.

Water Resources:

Structures such as coastal protection systems, marine structures such as marinas, harbors, ports, dams, all require specialized studies about the effects of water that must be controlled, which are done by water resources engineers. Water resources engineering can be classified into areas like hydrology, which deals with the broader scope of water quantity and distribution that needs to be controlled, hydromechanics, which deals with the design itself of the structures that will handle water, and coastal protection, which deals with structures at the coasts where all effects of coastal waves, tides also need to be taken into account.

Transportation:

Transportation engineers mainly deal with design of highways, roads and their supplementary components. This design is not only the road structure carrying loads but also obtaining the optimal route to handle the amount of traffic demand. Transportation engineers must also possess a reasonable amount of geotechnical knowledge as well. The bridge or tunnel structures along a highway are designed by structural engineers, but how the bridge or tunnel fits into the highway system, or if it is even needed in the first place, falls into transportation engineering’s realm.

Construction:

This is the branch that does not perform design like the ones listed above but takes those designs and builds them. The design scope is limited only to temporary structures like shoring, scaffoling, formwork etc… that are used to facilitate the progress of work. In relation to the branches listed above, working in construction discipline requires a higher degree of understanding and knowledge of project management in practice, although theoretically project management concept applies to anything. Civil engineers working in construction must possess great interpersonal, organizational and leadership skills and must be able to work under stressed job conditions with tight schedules and budgets often. The disciplines listed above must always take into account the logistics and constructability aspects of what they are designing, therefore construction engineers often also get involved in the project in design stages as applicable, before start of construction, and definitely closer to the start of construction stage, while items such as bids, work scopes, submittals, contracts/subcontracts are worked on. Although they do not design structures, construction engineers must still understand the concepts behind designs to a reasonable depth, even if it may not be as high as the engineers working in branches listed above. Construction engineers must ensure that the work schedule is effectively planned so that things will get done on time and in the right sequence and within schedule and quality limits. Construction engineers deal heavily with the project schedule, which is like a keystone of project management.

By: A. Tuter

This post is adapted from the book “How to Construct: Introduction to Civil Engineering, Structures and Construction“

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