What Is Civil Engineering?

Posted by Architecture & Engineering Malaysia on November 30th, 2020

Civil engineering is the design and construction of public buildings, such as dams, bridges, and other significant infrastructure projects. It is one of the oldest engineering branches, dating back to when people first began living in permanent communities and started to mold their surroundings to meet their needs.

Early engineers constructed walls, roads, bridges, dams, and levees, drilling wells, irrigation ditches, and trenches. When broader numbers of people started to move together in cities, these people wanted safe supplies of clean water, waste disposal, a network of streets and roads for business and commerce, and a way to protect themselves from hostile neighbors.

Ancient civil engineering projects include the Roman Empire roads, the Great Wall of China, the Mesa Verde cliffs, and the Mayan ruins of Copan, Palenque, and Tikal. Many early cultures have constructed temples for their kings or gods. These may have been plain mountains or genuinely incredible achievements, such as the Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge, whose creation of pre-industrial civilizations remains unexplained. The names of the engineers who built these wonders have been lost to antiquity.

What does a civil engineer do?

Civil engineers design, build, supervise, manage and maintain large-scale construction projects and systems, including highways, buildings, airports, tunnels, dams, bridges, and water and sewer systems.

These engineers can also conduct site preparation tasks, such as excavation, earth shifting, and grading for large-scale building projects. Also, civil engineers may conduct or write requirements for destructive or non-destructive testing of the performance, reliability, and long-term durability of materials and structures.

What a civil engineer needs to know

Civil engineers today require an in-depth knowledge of mechanics, geometry, geology, and hydrology. They also need to know the properties of a wide variety of construction materials such as concrete and structural steel and the types and capacities of construction equipment. With this expertise, engineers could design structures that satisfy expense, protection, stability, longevity, and energy efficiency specifications. Civil engineers will need to have a working knowledge of structural and mechanical engineers.

These engineers will be engaged at almost any level of a large construction project. This can include site selection, writing procedure, and material requirements, evaluating subcontractors' bids, maintaining compliance with building standards, and overseeing all stages of construction, from grading and earthing to painting and finishing.

More and more, civil engineers depend on computer-aided design (CAD) systems; computer skills are therefore important. In addition to accelerating the planning process for civil engineering projects, CAD programs make it easier to change plans and produce functional blueprints for construction crews.