Talk:Civil engineering/Archive 1

Spanish

Ingenieros civiles dedicados al diseño y construcción de vias, puentes y tuneles.

I removed this sentence from the end of the article; this is the English Wikipedia. I can't read Spanish very well, but it seems to be a simple, one-sentence explanation of what civil engineering actually is. Since this article didn't have one of those in the first paragraph, I added one in English. -- Merphant

What is Civil Engineering

This page doesn't seem to describe the civil engineering I know and practice. In my world most civil engineers are:

• Site designers who prepare construction plans for the interface of construction projects with the real world. They do paving, grading, water, sewer, drainge, and irrigation designs and work under architects.
• Land development engineers who prepare construction plans for paving, grading, water, sewer, drainage, and irrigation for subdivisions as prime consultants.

Some civil engineers specialize in such disciplines as:

• Water or sewer systems and networks master planning.
• Flood control analysis and planning

Structural engineering is a sub-discipline, but isn't a majority segment to my knowledge. Hawstom 22:56, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think the page is OK for the most part. Each of the sub-disciplines are civil engineer things. A little more clean up could be done to uniformly convert references from sanitary engineering to environmental engineering. The part of the article that confuses me is the discussion of Master of Science. It is not clear if a master of science level degree in any field (say biology) qualifies to be called "civil engineer" or only engineering related studies. greybeard 15:05, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree that this page seems pretty good, although each of these sub-disciplines can easily be broken down into sub-sub-disciplines. For example, transportation design, transportation planning, traffic engineering, mass transit design, mass transit operations, etc... but I don't think that such detail should be included in this article. Spin-off separate articles if anyone wants to go into that level of detail. And while I'm at it, I think that the Urban Engineering would be better suited to a spin-off article of Transportation Engineering. --Thisisbossi 19:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Flippant definition

I have heard it said that "Mechanical Engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets". But I've also heard the comment "I've never met a civil engineer.

I know these don't fit into encyclopedic style, but thought somone might be amused, if they haven't already heard them. -- WCFrancis 21:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

In a similar vein the UK phone book used to have the entry: Civil Engineering- see Boring. Leithp 07:21, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Tertiary qualifications

What are they? Please list in article, I'm guessing: education, experience, examination. Steven McCrary 15:33, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

• Tertiary qualifications are post-secondary school, as you have guessed. It goes primary school, secondary school, then tertiary, where tertiary corresponds to university studies. I'm not sure what an American friendly term would be.--Commander Keane 02:34, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

• Tertiary? I think you're talking about what we usually just call "college".  ;) Education in the U.S. gets called Elementary School, Middle School/Jr. High, High School, College, and Grad School. Truth be told, I don't even know without going to look it up (or at least thinking real hard) whether Secondary School means High School or College. Lousy modern mass media interfering with the evolution of English into multiple new languages like British, Canadamerican, and Austrokiwi. The Literate Engineer 02:40, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

• While Tertiary Education is a correct term to use, an equivalent and possibly more universal one might be Higher Education. To answer the other point; Secondary School in the UK refers to the equivalent of US High School. Leithp 20:19, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
• I am good with "higher education." Steven McCrary 13:22, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Licensing

The impression I get from reading this section is that Civil Engineers in the U.S. are handed a license with their undergraduate diploma. I recall at least two licensing exams for CE's after graduating from college. Can someone provide more background here? --Fss 01:06, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Good catch. I do believe I've fixed it, although it's far from the best prose I've ever written. The Literate Engineer 02:46, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

That's more like it! The license requirements for CE's really make them stand out from other engineers.--Fss 14:11, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

what are the Duties and responsibilities of civil engineers

That raises a question: is the sign-and-stamp setup in the U.S. something that is used internationally? The Literate Engineer 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi, it says on the main text that to become chartered in the Uk you now have to acheive a MEng degree and only graduates who passed before the new rules could become chartered with a BEng. This isn't true, you can become chartered with a BEng degree, I checked on the ICE (Institute of Civil Engineers) website and I am studying a BEng degree and hope to acheive Chartered status sometime in my career. 14 March 2006

Sorry again but you do need a MEng to become a chartered Engineer, the rules changed between 1999 and 2000 depending on if you required a BEng or a MEng. I started at notts uni in 1999 but need a MEng, my twin brother started at Leed uni and since the ICE review that course in 2000 he only needs BEng to become CEng MICE. If you finish uni with a BEng you have to go for the Incorporated Engineer status (IEng MICE) then there are several routes on how to upgrade this to full Chartership (CEng MICE. I know this for a fact because I have a trainign agreement with the ICE and will be sitting my memebrship exams for IEng in the Autumn. If you look at the ICE new 3000 series doc. on the website these should give you all the info you need. As for the yanks, they have a similar system for becomeing "chartered" or registered but there you have to get state registered. So someone register in Ohio won't be able to work in New York say as a registered engineer .. hope that clears things up ..

As far as I am aware, in the USA, Professional Engineer (PE) licensure is acceptable regardless of what state is was acquired in. There may be some exceptions I am not aware of, though, as each state sets their own requirements for licensure. Therefore it is possible that a state could only have the applicant sign his/her name on the exam and voila: licensed. So while at this time I do not believe there are any state to state restrictions, it is always possible that such restrictions may arise. --Thisisbossi 19:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

This is not entirely correct. Each state in the US requires engineers to be licensed in that state to practice in that state. All states offer some level of comity to other states, accepting the other states' licenses as proof of having passed the exam and any other common requirements. However, most states have their own "law and ethics" exam, which is usually a take-home exam designed to get the candidate to actually read the booklet. As far as I know, most states require this part to be redone prior to licensing. The other big exception is that California requires two additional exams - Surveying and Seismic Principles - to obtain a CE license; candidates with CEs from other states must pass those exams to get California licensing. There is no comity. I've heard that Washington state also has a seismic exam, and does not accept any other state's license in lieu of that exam, even California's. Argyriou 16:56, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Image

I noticed this page didn't have any images, so I scoured WP:FP and came up with one of the Falkirk Wheel. I didn't want to have a picture of a bridge, which is something of a cliche subject for Civil Engineering, so I think this one is interesting. Does anyone have any ideas for the rest of the page? Leithp (talk) 13:35, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

• I agree that bridges are a tad cliche, but bridges have are easy to capture the public's attention through the blending of science, art, and usability. Not too many people really care about a pretty trickling filter or riprap technology. Structural and construction engineering tends to have a lot of those bigger projects that capture the public's attention; whereas the others tend to hide behind the scenes. I'd recommend the Millau Viaduct, Hoover Dam, Pyramids, Panama Canal, a water bridge, images of non-traditional intersections, both ancient and modern aquaducts, Pantheon... Most of my favorite examples of engineering, unfortunately, do not lend themselves too well to pictures; but those are at least a good start. --Thisisbossi 19:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Honestly most of the stuff I do as a civil engineer has nothing to do with bridges or guys holding plans and pointing at something (as you see in a bunch of stock photography shots).

Failure analysis and mitigation

A significant sub-discipline not currently addressed is failure & damage analysis of various kinds and mitigation.

• Is this discipline itself broken up into areas such as structural, hydro, etc.? If so, then I'd instead classify Failure Analysis & Mitigation as a sub-sub-discipline of the more generalised disciplines we currently have. --Thisisbossi 19:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Civil engineering in its original meaning

Isnt all engineering except the engineering carried out by military personel civil engineering? --Dahlis 20:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

• By it's more pure definition of "engineering for the public", then there could be an arguement here. Some other engineering professions are similar and share many of the same sciences: both aerospace and nuclear engineering share many aspects of environmental and hydro. Petroleum engineering is similar to geotechnical engineering and also environmental. Mechanical engineering also uses hydro to a large degree; but transportation engineering is quickly becoming a close ally. Electrical engineers often find jobs as transportation engineers working on signals and other intelligent transportation systems. I could go on with far more examples: architects, chemists, etc... As I understand it, decades ago, a lot of these separate engineering professions were indeed classified under civil engineering. Even today, universities are starting to split off the branches shown on this page as separate professions; and many engineers I work with are turning their backs on general organizations such as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in favor of specialized organizations such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). Now in a military sense, they also have plenty of civil engineers -- particularly within the Army Corps of Engineers, which is a notable employer of hydro and environmental engineers. In short, yes: you are right; and no: you are wrong. Just depends on how you look at it. --Thisisbossi 19:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Sub-Disciplines

I feel like we have a lot of redundancy with the sub-disciplines, and I have a feeling that it is either a result of uninformed individuals or people whom are within that specific profession and deem it to be one-of-a-kind. Possibly this weekend, unless someone beats me to it, I intend to reorganise the information here and shift some more info off to the spin-off pages. Here are my current viewpoints:

• Fire Protection Engineering - This is OK for a sub-discipline, but some information should be moved to the spin-off page -- specifically with regards to the last two sentences involving its history within Rome and the modern era.
• Transportation Engineering -- The last two sentences regarding ISTEA and ITS should be moved to the spin-off article (besides, SAFETEA-LU is the new hot topic).
• Planning Engineering -- This sounds more like a non-engineering administrator/business occupation or the business aspect of a construction engineer. I intend to remove this one entirely unless someone objects and provides a clear indication as to how this differs from my two alternatives. I feel that "planning engineering" sounds too broad of a term, and upon first glance I was expecting that it would be related to transportation planning.
• Hydraulic engineering -- Reorganise this so that the related branches are either named within the paragraph and not given as a vertical list; or are relocated to the spin-off article.
• Construction engineering -- I actually think this one is too short and could stand to have another sentence or two of detail.
• Surveying -- I feel like the middle sentence is unnecessary... it seems rather obvious that a surveyor would utilise surveying methods.  :)
• Urban Planning -- This still feels like it should be a sub-discipline of transportation engineering. Most planners I know are either transportation engineers or else they are not engineers at all, but rather planners. Such a misnomer can have pretty major legal implications. I intend to remove this and relocate it to transportation, unless someone can provide a clear indication as to how this differs from existing sub-disciplines of transportation engineering -- particularly transportation planning and traffic engineering.

--Thisisbossi 21:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

All sounds very sensible. It's not a paper encyclopaedia so we're not limited for space - this article should stick with civil engineering in general, and specifics of subdisciplines in their own articles. Aquilina 22:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I've made my changes, basically removing information that I felt to be adequately covered via the spin-off pages and otherwise following my above comments. I know we're not limited for space, but I'd personally prefer to keep it concise when we have specific articles dedicated to each topic. I welcome further improvements upon my edits. My next stop will be to improve the transport engineering page (discussion). --Thisisbossi 03:41, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

"Water resources engineering" was just added by 130.203.206.176. As I cannot discern why this deserves a separate sub-discipline from Hydraulic engineering, I intend to revert and/or remove this within approximately 24 hours unless adequate reasoning is provided as to why this deserves to be a separate discipline. Sorry if it seems like I am taking totalitarian control of this article, but civil engineering can very easily be split up into a LOT of specialties; even though they all follow the same general theme. My vision of this article is for it to be as concise and general as possible (unlike my discussion comments), letting the spin-off links provide the detail. --Thisisbossi 21:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest putting a little bit more about water resources engineering into the hydraulic engineering section when removing water resources engineer, because the way that hydraulic engineering currently reads, WRE is not included. There are some differences in emphasis of practice - a water resources engineer is to a hydraulic engineer what a traffic planner is to a road designer. Argyriou 19:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I added one sentence onto Hydraulic to briefly summarise Water Resources, but I don't really like the paragraph too much. As I'm not employed in Hydro, my knowledge of it is limited: are most Hydro engineers in design, operations, maintenance, etc.? I would like the content of the paragraph to be roughly proportional to the general theme of the field. If most Hydro engineers are in design, then the current phrasing is close. If it's split 50/50 between design and operations (i.e. resource management), then the design portion should be cut down a bit and the operations description should be expanded. Lastly, feel free to throw in all the info you can think up into the Hydraulic engineering page if you think it's getting too detailed to be here. --Thisisbossi 20:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Water resources engineering is actually a separate sub-discipline from Hydraulics. There is some overlap which is mainly to the modeling of moving water (hydrology is concerned with water quality and quantity prediction, hydaulics is concerned with model confined flow). Water resources deals with water in nature and in impoundments (dams and aquifers). Hydraulics deals with water captured in a conduit (open or closed). To combine them, in my view, is a mistake. Hydraulic engineers do design, mostly, but are also involved with operations and maintenance. It depends on the size of the system. Large systems, such as the Mississippi River (USA) requires full time engineers for operation, small systems do not. SteveMc 13:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

My issue is that it all deals with water. Traffic engineers and highway designers are nothing at all alike; and transportation planners are often times artists whom cannot even read plans. However, we are all transportation engineers. I still stand by my argument that Hydraulic Engineers and Water Resources Engineering should be in the same group on this page, but perhaps with a different heading; and links going to each of its spin-off articles? I would like to get more input on this: separate discipline, part of a combined hydro discipline w/ a new heading, or part of a combined hydro discipline w/o a new heading? --Thisisbossi 15:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I do not buy this analogy. And I do not like calling a highway engineer a transportation engineer. These are separate sub-disciplines as well. I do not see that combining them creates a better understanding of the sub-disciplines of civil engineering, in fact it creates confusion. Pavement design and highway design is nothing like transportation planning, and it is confusing to categorize them as such. Under this schema, pipeline design is also a discipline of transportation engineering. This schema confuses terminology, and does not clarify them. Just because hydro- and hydra- are suffixes meaning water, used in various words about water, does not make them the same discipline, nor qualify them for the same heading. SteveMc 04:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

See, I look at highway engineer as a sub-discipline of transportation engineer, which is in turn a sub-discipline of civil engineering. I base that off of the university engineering departments I'm familiar with, where the break-down is into 5 broad groups (Environmental, Water, Structures, Transportation, Geotechnical), with each of those broken down further, so that a traffic engineer is a type of transportation engineer, a highway engineer is a type of transportation engineer, and a pavement engineer is a type of transportation engineer. Also, my (limited) experience with job applications and hirings has been that entry-level jobs are listed as "transportation engineer", while upper-level (specialized) jobs are listed as "traffic engineer", "highway engineer", etc. The Literate Engineer 02:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

A person who does highway design needs to know something about pavement design, even if they leave the specifics to someone else. A pavement designer should know something about highway geometric design. A trasnportation planner who is going to do anything more than draw a line between two points and say "there should be a highway here" needs to know something about geometric design of highways, even if he's completely ignorant of pavement design principles. All three jobs are branches of transportation engineer.

One can argue that pipeline designers are transportation engineers, as they do something related to what engineers who work on freight terminals do, and it's quite possible to argue that the routing of and what happens at each end of the pipeline is more important (and more difficult) than the hydraulics of the actual pipe. Argyriou 02:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Should Fire Protection Engineering really be a subcategory, or should it be a subcategory of Material Sciences or Building Sciences Nfitz 01:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Attention Fellow Engineers

(moved this here from main article) --Thisisbossi 10:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to make a request to the greater Engineering community. Perhaps one of you with high level ASCE connections would be willing to pass this thru the proper channels and then on to ASME, IEEE, and hundreds of other great organizations. I'll be the first to admit that perhaps this isn't the best method to pass this message on, but come on; really folks, we are an iterative people. Help me find the correct solution/method, as this is a universal problem. And that problem is; we are silent.

Our highly educated voices, as a group, are far too silent. I would like to see every engineering group put experts forward as a bit of community service to fill in some of these technical pages. We may not be able to fix the Schools, but it would be a great gift to them. Perhaps if enough other industries pick up the idea maybe we could see our ASCE Infrastructure Report Card grade for the Schools go from D- to B-. If you want to claim the volunteer work as an individual, as an agency, or as a company as a service then please feel free to so with no shame. I for one am putting my shoulder behind RO Desalination. I would encourage everyone to pass this concept on to their friends, coworkers, students, bosses, and all kindred enginerds. We have a great opportunity before us. Please embrace it. If we could allow this statement or a good edit of it to be up on this page for 1 month (ie expiration date for this tag will be 9/24/06. This tag will be removed on 9/24/06). IF there is another medium for this that I’m unaware of I’m fine with it being in discussion. However, I think you might agree with me that saying it loudly and with easy access for a bit would be very help in getting the message heard. If we could place this or a similar message on the Engineering Portal I’d appreciate it.FOK SD OA 06:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

While I understand the desire to remove and clean this note from the page by placing it into discussion, I still feel a very valid point is being made and the layman doesn't look at the discussion. What about the questions raised on the proper method for having this conversation? I'm new to the edit process, would it be possible for you to put a note declaring this open letter was moved to discussion on the main page. I think this is a conversation that is page one and shouldn't be buried on page 6 of metro.FOK SD OA 16:25, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Nothing against you nor your statement, for I actually think it to be a good idea that engineering organisations push for greater education amongst the general public; but bear in mind that this website is an encyclopedia: intended for factual information rather than feuding, adverts, or (as in this case) calls to action. You are welcome to spread your word by way of discussions, talk pages, or established engineering networks (such as professional listservs). Of course, you are also encouraged to be bold and make edits yourself -- don't be too discouraged if someone moves your stuff around (it happens to all of us ... such as my losing battle to get rid of Water Resources Engineering in this very article). --Thisisbossi 17:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Tech review for Children

Is there a movement within the community to break down some of the technical aspects of our field into terms that children can understand. When I write O&M manual they are drafted at a 4th grade reading level and I don't see why this environments goals should be any different. Is there any movement to make techno-babble into plain english? Maybe a simplified break out model of issuesFOK SD OA 16:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

hi . im currently a student in an hnc in engineering (machatronics based)

but i am movin into the line of civil engineering . im an 18 year old student and to say the least i know practically nothing of a profesion that i will be following for the rest of my life . the problem with the trade is that there isnt enough advertising about it .its hard to find out more about the trade. up untill like 10 months ago i had no clue there were this many subdivisions of civil engineering . as far as i knew i could be either a "surveyor" or "structural engineer" and then suddenly there were a whole new world of oppertunitys for me to follow .i know some of u might see this as pointless but i thought mayb it would help as a student following a career in "engineering". if it does then good if it doesnt ... then sorry . —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.41.192.178 (talk) .

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