Civil Engineering: What It’S About

"Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings". Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering

If you're standing on the terrace of your 20-storey building, look around you. Far and wide, you will see magnificent pieces of infrastructure that you just happen to take for granted. These bridges, flyovers, metro-rail networks, water tanks, and other such structures, that you're seeing are the product and responsibility of the hard work put in by civil engineers.

So what does civil engineering entail? It refers to the design and construction, and thereafter maintenance of public works. These jobs are either undertaken by the government, or contracted to private companies who bid for such projects. Consequently, these jobs fall either within the government sector or the private sector. Either way, the job of the engineer is of utmost importance since he or she is responsible for ensuring the planning, execution, success and longevity of public infrastructure.

Individuals who hold jobs in civil engineering design and build public infrastructure, according to present region standard codes. The quality and design of such structures must be efficient, sustainable and aimed at ensuring public safety. As a result, these jobs require proper planning and execution, followed by periodic checks to ensure quality and safety. These jobs are diverse, and one can choose to be in the transportation sector, the rural housing sector or the urban planning sector,

among others. For example, in the area of rural housing, a civil engineer would be responsible for conceptualizing a sewage system or a water plant.

These jobs require a whole gamut of skills. Practical knowledge in environmental development, structural engineering, hydraulic engineering, and geo-technical areas is extremely beneficial. These coupled with analytical and critical reasoning strengths greatly equip a civil engineer in doing a good job. The reason for this is engineers are responsible for designing and planning projects basis given site criteria. Since each site differs from another in terms of atmospheric conditions, environmental factors and biological diversity, each site requires a different approach, and a good sense of reasoning and anticipation normally proves to be highly necessary.

Jobs in civil engineering rely on a specific set of interests and abilities. In school, a candidate looking for these jobs should have been a whiz-kid at subjects like math, physics and general sciences. In other words, a candidate interested in this field should have a background in math, science and/or design. Different combinations of these areas help decipher which branch of civil engineering a candidate should enter.

This is an extremely niche, but extremely satisfying career path. Entry level salaries lie between Rs. 25k and Rs. 40k per month depending on seniority. Once a part of the industry, salaries expand in leaps and bounds. To add to this, the quality of the job is superior. An average day in the life of a engineer sees him deal with different issues thrown up by different projects. Since each project requires specific output basis specific qualities of the particular site, each project is new to a civil engineer, not leaving him much room for monotony.