Construction engineers may be the employees of construction companies, or they may be the owners of such companies. Recent civil engineering graduates opting for careers in this field are likely to get their feet wet as testers of construction materials or as project site inspectors. As these engineers gain more experience, they are given responsibility for supervising construction activities. With continued experience, they are likely to assume management roles in construction companies. Experienced construction engineers are responsible for hiring site personnel and construction specialists, for estimating costs based upon structural designs, for monitoring day-to-day expenses on the job site, and in the competitive process of bid preparation. Construction engineers work closely with designers and with project owners to ensure that the owners' wishes and desires are carried out in the most efficient and cost-effective manner, whether the owner is a government agency, corporation, utility, or private investor.
The earning potential for civil engineers in construction is the highest for all the areas in civil engineering. However, the demand for these engineers is quite sensitive to local, regional, national, even international economic conditions. For instance, when commercial building booms during economic upturns, construction engineers are highly sought after. On the other hand, many construction companies were hit hard during the recession of the late 1980s, when office building and other large-scale commercial construction virtually ground to a halt. For this reason, more than a few of the civil engineers who specialize in construction lead somewhat nomadic lives, spending, for instance, two years in Minneapolis on a project and then relocating to California or Saudi Arabia to supervise or manage another project. Indeed, the largest U.S. construction firms never hesitate to bid for projects virtually anywhere in the world.
An estimated one in ten civil engineers working in the United States specializes in construction engineering.
Environmental Engineering
With the rise in concern about the environment, this relatively new area in civil engineering has really come of age in recent years. Civil engineers have long been involved in obtaining and purifying drinking water supplies, as well as designing and planning facilities for the removal and treatment of residential and industrial wastewater. But these engineers were traditionally referred to as sanitary engineers. However, pollution control has been greatly expanded to include efforts directed toward air pollution, groundwater monitoring, solid waste management, and environmental impact analyses. As with other fields in civil engineering, technology has transformed a field that was always considered essential to society-the way garbage pickup is considered essential-but was perceived as decidedly unglamorous.
Today's environmental engineer may fly planes with wing-mounted sensors to measure phosphate or nitrate levels in river or bays, and then feed the data into computer-imaging programs to create detailed maps of pollutant levels. Colleagues on the ground may use strobes or other sophisticated instruments to detect sediment levels in rivers, while paper mill owners, farmers, politicians, and community leaders wait for definitive answers on pollutant levels. Other environmental engineers may be involved in the billion dollar retrofits of chemical plants or power plants to meet stringent air quality standards, or working to rescue vast tracts of endangered wetlands such as the Florida Everglades.
Civil engineers engaged in environmental engineering work closely with ecologists, hydrologists, biologists, and other scientists to determine the quality of life in particular environments. These teams try to develop engineering systems to treat wastewater, purify drinking water, clean up polluted waterways, restore damaged ecosystems, decrease air pollution, or build landfills or related facilities. As an indicator of how much the general public values the work of environmental engineers, their efforts, such as treating wastewater with pollution-eating water plants and bacteria, frequently garner prominent space in daily newspapers.
About one in eight civil engineers, working in the United States practices environmental engineering.
(Note to the reader: If you have been keeping track of the number of civil engineers working in each area out of the total number of practicing civil engineers, you've probably noticed we have accounted for more than 100 percent of the total. This is because many civil engineers specialize in more than one area.)
