Careers in Civil Engineering

Civil Engineering is one of the most popular and commonly applied branches of engineering. There is hardly any day in our life when we don’t come across the applications of civil engineering. Whether you are at home, office, theater, air port, or on road, bridge etc, almost everywhere you will notice civil engineering affecting your life in one or the other way. The whole external world seems to be the marvel of this field.

It is the civil engineering that has enabled development of some of the monstrous structures of the world be it Taj Mahal, Eifel tower, White House, Twin Towers in Malaysia, etc. It is civil engineering that has enabled development of the some of the largest bridges of the world for road and railway traffic as well as the long and complicated flyovers.

With the new developments going on in the world, it seems that the available infrastructure is shrinking and the need for more and more infrastructure is felt in the form of the buildings, bridges, power plants, air ports, etc. This construction and development work looks unending for the requirements of the human beings only tend to increase and not reduce. It is the human nature to develop.

The duty of the civil engineer is to develop various structures for private or public use. There are various fields that a candidate who is interested in taking civil engineering as his career, can opt for. When making a career choice always give topmost priority to your interests and strengths and less to the jobs available in the market. Civil engineering is also one of the best choice you want to work independently by opening a firm. Here are various fields in civil engineering, which you can consider while planning a career in civil engineering.

1) Consulting Engineer: You can become a private consultant engineer or join some company as the consulting engineer. The main job of the consulting engineer is design the buildings, bridges, air ports etc and consultation to the contractors who will actually carry out construction activities.

2) Construction engineer: You can do the construction as the private contractor or as an engineer in the company. Your job will be to plan and supervise various construction activities like making the bridges, buildings, shopping complex, theaters etc. Here you will handle a team of workers who will construct the walls, do structural works, plumbing, painting etc. The construction engineer works under the guidance of and the drawings provided by the consulting engineer.

3) Structural engineer: The structural engineer designs various concrete structures like roof of the building, the structures for the bridges, flyovers, air ports, power plants etc. The contractor cannot do the construction of structures without the approval of qualified structural engineer. For this specialization as post graduate in structural engineering after doing bachelor course in civil engineering is essential.

4) Surveying: Before starting any work in civil engineering project, surveying is carried out to study the feasibility of the project. The surveying is also carried out to study the complete layout of the land where construction activity is proposed. There are certain companies and independent engineers exclusively involved into the surveying activities though in many cases, the consultant engineers and firms also carry out these activities.

5) CAD Expert: This is one of the hottest careers in civil engineering. As the CAD expert you can create various building designs and drawings using CAD software like AutoCAD, CATIA, Ansys etc.