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 bridges, roads, waterways, dams, ports, railways and buildings. Civil engineering is the oldest engineering discipline after military engineering. Actually it should have been defined as Construction Engineering, but it was termed as Civil Engineering to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering as in the past all the Construction works were undertaken by Military forces in the Europe. So, eventually it became Civil (Non-military) Engineering.
Civil engineers typically possess an academic degree with a major in Civil Engineering. In India, the length of study for such a degree is usually four years and the completed degree is usually designated as a Bachelor of Engineering.
It is traditionally broken into several sub-disciplines including,
1. Environmental Engineering
2. Surveying
3. Geo-technical Engineering
4. Structural Engineering
5. Transportation
6. Town and Urban Planning
7. Water Resources Engineering
8. Construction Engineering
9. Coastal Engineering
10. Building Engineering
11. Construction Management
12. Estimation and Valuation Engineering
There is no one typical career path for civil engineers. Most people who graduate with civil engineering degrees start with jobs that require a low level of responsibility, and as the new engineers prove their competence, they are trusted with tasks that have larger consequences and require a higher level of responsibility. However, within each discipline of civil engineering career path options vary. Though they are known as Civil Engineers in general, they become specialist of particular sub-disciplines after working for some months or years in the same discipline. So, I will choose to call them based on their discipline rather than Civil Engineers, i.e. Environmental Engineers, Surveyors, etc. Civil Engineers have all the above given Career options or discipline to choose from based on their interest.
Interested to Join Software Field?
Software Engineering or IT engineering is not a sub discipline of Civil engineering. With this additional paragraph, I would like to tell those students who wanted to join Computer Science Engineering or Information Technology studies, but are forced to join Civil, Electrical, Chemical or any other engineering by our Merit based admission system. Those students still have very good chances to join software industry if they follow my one “magical suggestion”.
And that is after joining Civil or Electrical or Chemical Engineering; they have 6 semester in the first 3 years of their engineering studies. They are relatively having more free time in the first 3 months of each semester and 18 months in totality. They should undertake some software courses (C, C++, Java, .Net, VB, Databases softwares) during these 18 months, gain expertise. Further, they can consult their elder relatives who are already part of software industry for the courses to be studied so that they can match exact requirement of industry. Remember; develop good analytical skills, problem (not day to day problems but Engineering and Mathematical Problems) solving skills, as no software company differentiates between students of different engineering branches, in fact they will be happy to have some talents who are having knowledge of some core engineering branches as they develop softwares for core applications also.