Consulting Civil Engineer

Consulting civil engineers advise on the design, development and construction of a range of projects in the built and natural environment, ensuring the safe, timely and well-resourced completion of projects. You will liaise with clients, and plan, manage, design and supervise the construction. You will work in a number of different settings and, with experience, could run projects as a project manager.

Contracting Civil Engineer

Contracting civil engineers turn the plans of consulting civil engineers - the designers - into reality. As a contracting civil engineer, you will oversee the actual construction on the ground and work in conjunction with consulting engineers. All civil engineers need a good understanding of design and construction processes, as well as of health and safety issues.

You will use your professional expertise to organise human and material resources on site and ensure that projects run to time and budget and are safe to work on.

Types of civil engineering

You may choose to specialise in a certain area of civil engineering, such as:

• buildings
• coastal and marine
• construction of dams and canals
• environment
• geotechnical engineering
• highways and transportation
• power
• rail
• structural work
• tunnelling
• waste management
• water and public health

Particular ethical debates related to civil engineering include the environmental impacts of major engineering projects.