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Where do civil engineers work?

Are civil engineers on the field or in the office or both? I have tried to research this, but I get all sorts of answers. I don't know whether I should become a civil engineer or not as I am not too keen with working on the field everyday and would prefer an office role.
Original post by erica3358
Are civil engineers on the field or in the office or both? I have tried to research this, but I get all sorts of answers. I don't know whether I should become a civil engineer or not as I am not too keen with working on the field everyday and would prefer an office role.


Those who work in consultancies doing the design type work will be office based, and those working for the contractors actually constructing the designs are more likely to be based onsite/in the field.
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Rhodie72
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Original post by erica3358
Are civil engineers on the field or in the office or both? I have tried to research this, but I get all sorts of answers. I don't know whether I should become a civil engineer or not as I am not too keen with working on the field everyday and would prefer an office role.


Civil Engineers are middle to top management who primarily work in an office environment but there is a huge scope to go into any engineering filed because it covers all engineering fields from Civils, mechanical and structural disciplines. There are times that we go work in the field but that might just be a walk for an hour a week on a building site, a site survey, a geotechnics evaluation or just working at a construction site in th site offices of a major contractor.

Ther is so much involved with civil engineering that this could not do justice to the scope and variety of jobs they do. They range from space travel to deep tunnels under mountains and underground rail systems like the channel tunnel with everything in between.

Whatever contract you do you will earn decent money because it is a highly skilled job in demand worldwide and America seems to pay the best salaries.

You can always specialise in structural with a geotechnics bias for mining and quarry management. Those usually start at about £40,000 p.a.
Original post by erica3358
Are civil engineers on the field or in the office or both? I have tried to research this, but I get all sorts of answers. I don't know whether I should become a civil engineer or not as I am not too keen with working on the field everyday and would prefer an office role.


both.

engineers can be in consulting firms, working fot construction contractors or working in-house for some type of company with particularly heavy structural engineering needs (e.g. oil and gas).

for the most part you're job as an engineer is to be a subject matter expert who provides engineering design services, overseeing construction and coming up with maintenance plans. i.e. you're never really going to be doing most of the heavy lifting.

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