What Is Civil Engineering – Demystifying This Old Profession

In the simplest term, Civil Engineering is a profession that deals with design and maintenance of natural and physical constructions in the built environment. It is one of the oldest professions that can as well date back to when people started making things and putting a roof over their heads.

It has a history that has giving a deeper understanding of structures, geography, mechanic, mathematics, physics, and the environment through the application of physical and scientific principles. It has played an invaluable role in resolving many technical and simple hurdles societies have face over the centuries. This is a profession that is constantly evolving to keep the solutions applicable to current demands.

Civil engineering in extension touches every aspect of our lives. It is influential in providing good transportation, social amenities, and more. The water supply systems, roads, bridges, electricity or other forms of power and buildings are all creations of civil engineering.

What we view to be modern civilisation has much of its existence linked to civil engineering. This profession is able to have such a massive impact because of its sub-disciplines that are inter-connected. One of the sub-disciplines is transportation engineering that covers the design and construction of rails, roads, airports, and subway systems. Structural engineering is a discipline that hands the designing and construction of the bridges used in the transportation sector and the buildings that are today’s concrete jungles.

The two disciplines are further boosted by Construction engineering which entails designing and planning execution works for even hydraulic, site development, and geotechnical engineering disciplines. There is still the important aspect of understanding the inner workings and potencies of the many materials used in construction. This is where the materials science and engineering discipline comes into play.

Civil engineering is also a key player in the maintenance of good health. Aside from the construction of the health institutions, it is through the sanitary engineering discipline that we can get the clean water that we drink. The sewage systems and other forms of waste management systems are also under sanitary engineering.

In other fronts, civil engineering is also known to be an influential component in the research and understanding the state of the earth and the environment in general. Disciplines like Earthquake engineering, Coastal engineering, geotechnical engineering, environmental engineering, land survey are all inter-connected. Though each will have a specific area of focus as is clearly evident from the names, they all help in making the world we live in a better place to stay, giving viable solutions of exploiting and maintaining our environment.