Civil Engineering?

[lem0n4de]

Hi. If you know someone who works in civil engineering, how much time do they spend in the office versus on site? Googling the question suggests about 50:50 as the headline answer, but are there some civil engineering jobs that are 100% office-based?

For context, my son is exploring it as a degree/career option, so I'm trying to guage how much flexibility there would be if he went down that path then realised he enjoyed office work much more than site work (or vice versa).

Yes, it depends on your role. If you train to become an actual civil engineer you'll spend a lot of time on site at first, but the further you progress in your career down that path (onto things like section engineer, sub agent and agent) you'll be more office-based with fewer site visits.

There's also roles in planning, quantity surveying, design. I would also recommend looking at the apprenticeship route into civil engineering - this is what I did. I started as a civil engineer and qualified as one and then went into planning, but I was paid the entire time and my company funded my qualifications (NVQ and HND) and also my EngTech and membership of the ICE. My company also offer a top up to degree level and honestly the experience you get from the off is invaluable on site.

Once you're in there's a lot of flexibility - there are so many jobs you don't realise there are! And it opens up opportunities for other related things to - environmental stuff.

There will always be site visits needed, but honestly it's pretty fun watching a job come together - having been on both sides! Working on site as an engineer and office based as a planner

Thanks@bogoblin . Yes, he'll be looking at the apprenticeship route too.. He's in year 12 at the moment. If you have any recommendations for companies that do Level 6 engineering apprenticeships I'd be interested - it's difficult to find a comprehensive list online as they seem to be advertised intermittently and temporarily like normal jobs, rather than systematically like degrees, even on gov.uk or ucas.

Depends on what role he takes. Civil engineer in am engineering consultancy can be mainly office based with occasional site visits to get details. For a construction firm you'd be site based 90% of the time.

I've been out of the game a bit (maternity so my brain is cheese) so I'm not very up to date, but (full disclosure, this is my company) BAM Nuttall/Royal BAM group do apprenticeships, I think they open their applications in February or so? They may have changed the route since I did mine (finished in 2020) and offer a path up to degree now, but lots of my friends from my course have gone on to level 6.

Genuinely I would keep an eye out for any roadworks or flood defences or any kind of construction you see, and give the company a Google! It can be hard to know who offers apprenticeships but once you know a few companies

Have a look for: BAM Nuttall, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Interserve, Arup (my experience with Arup is that they're usually design partners), Mott McDonald (same), K Rouse. These should have locations all over the country.

I have family members who are civil engineers and it seems like a fascinating career with options to go in many different directions/ways of working. Lots of opportunities to help design a more sustainable world.

Smallpeice (sic) Trust and EDT do summer schools and other activities that can help school students find out about the career, if you don’t already know about them. One of my DC found them really good.

To add to that list look at Arcadis, Royal HaskoningDHV, Gallfiord Tri, Atkins and Mackley

It totally depends. My dad was a civil engineer and during my lifetime he worked for the county council, doing 1-2 site days a week. In a different role he did a lot more.