What is a Civil Engineer?

You've probably never thought about life without civil engineers, but let’s take a minute to consider it now. Civil engineering is broken into five branches and each is vitally important to modern civilization. Without civil engineers, life would have the same setting as any typical zombie apocalypse movie: crumbling buildings, cracking roads, weak bridges and so on. Civil engineers not only design new structures but also play an important role in the up-keep of current ones. So, unless broken-down is the sort of ambiance your town or city is going for, then you need civil engineers.

Generally people branch civil engineering into five categories: transportation, structural, hydraulic, geotechnical and environmental. As you can probably guess, they each have their own field of focus. However, all five are intertwined and all five are needed to make the field of civil engineering successful. Here is a closer look at what each one does:

Source: thailand-tribune.com/highway/3724

      1.)    Transportation engineers handle exactly what their name implies, any form of transportation. This includes everything from highways to waterways to railroads to air traffic. As you can see transportation engineering encompasses a lot, so we’ll just focus on the “highways and roads” part of it. Transportation engineers take part in urban planning, which means they design transportation networks in cities and towns. Their goal is to provide roadways that are safe, economical, accessible and efficient for you and me.

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      2.)    Structural engineers, as Purdue points out on its website, participate in the “designing [of] infrastructure, critical to the 21^st century.” They design the basic structures that are needed for the operation of society, and do structural analysis by studying and predicting the behaviors of structures. They can build added safety into a structure by building it with redundancies; that way if a part breaks, the structure won’t collapse. However, as you can guess, this kind of additional feature cost more. Thus, it becomes the job of structural engineers to walk the fine line of maintaining public safety while staying in a budget.

Source: http://labs.blogs.com/its_alive_in_the_lab

      3.)    Hydraulic engineers look at the flow and forces of fluids (particularly water and sewage), and develop things like bridges, canals, dams and levees. They use fluid mechanics to figure out the best ways to collect, store and use water. Hydraulic engineers also research how water affects erosion, for example rain on roads or rivers with strong currents. If you live next to a river, you’ll know how often it changes. It becomes the job of hydraulic engineers to determine the effects the river will have on surrounding structures.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/

      4.)    Geotechnical engineers study what types of soil work best as foundations and building materials. As Berkeley eloquently states on its website: geotechnical engineers “focus on the body of the earth as the medium for [their] work.” This basically means geotechnical engineers use different types of earth to build things like the roads we drive on. Furthermore, geotechnical engineers are in charge of making sure the soil beneath buildings is compacted and strong enough to hold the structures up. They also help control geological hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and soil erosion.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering

       5.)    Environmental engineers strive to keep the land, water and air healthy and free of pollution. The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes their job as using “the principles of engineering, soil science, biology and chemistry to develop solutions to environmental problems.” They do this through programs such as waste water management, recycling and air pollution control. Additionally, environmental engineers take part in the restoration and enhancement of ecosystems. Ultimately, they keep the world environmentally friendly.

All five of these civil engineering branches are tied together with one common Code of Ethics. This Code of Ethics is the set of rules that engineers live by. It differentiates what is morally correct from what is morally wrong. This code spells out the obligations of an engineer to society, to their employer and clients, and to other engineers. There are laws governing the actions of engineering, but the Code of Ethics goes above and beyond to provide an additional level of security for the public and fair play between engineering companies. The Code of Ethics isn't enforced legally but an engineer that doesn't follow it is frowned upon and may face consequences from his/her employer or the public depending on the situation.

In conclusion, the theme here is that you can find civil engineering anywhere you go, and without it modern society would crumble. Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of just how important civil engineers are.