The civil engineer studies and gets trained to plan, design, and supervise a civil structure. Does that involve planning, designing, and building a house? Well, the job of an engineer is to plan and design not to build, if the engineer starts building he would be called a contractor. A civil engineer can build houses but they would be building a house as a contractor. An engineer is allowed to be both; an engineer and a contractor at the same time.
The civil engineers plan and design houses, they usually avoid taking the building houses
For the record, it’s civil engineers that plan and design our dream houses. It’s their job to do that. However, they hardly agree to build houses because the civil engineers are trained to design and handle the building project to the contractor. The contractor then put life into the civil engineer’s design.
Civil engineers can plan design all kinds of simple and complex houses
Civil engineering deals in building houses, buildings, roads, bridges, and dams. So, the civil engineers are trained to handle all sorts of projects; simple to complex houses. When it comes to building, they might not be able to handle the simplest project.
To be able to build houses or simply to act as a contractor at the same time, the civil engineers have to be trained for that as well
Clearly, planning and designing are “totally” different from constructing a house. The civil engineers that plan and design buildings(except school and hospital), roads, bridges, and dams, would only be able to take on the building project after a month of contractor’s training.
Civil engineers are not forbidden by law to build houses, they can build houses if they want to but it rarely happens. To be able to understand why it is so, we need to understand civil engineering well.
What is civil engineering?
Civil engineering deals with planning and designing infrastructure while protecting the environment and public health. It is regarded as the oldest engineering discipline that happens to deal in not just planning and designing but overseeing the construction and maintenance of the building structures as well. The engineers, whether it’s civil or not, are more concerned with coming up with the right design and looking after the construction process, the rest is just not their job.
Civil engineers are needed to be good in mathematics and physical sciences. To be able to act as a civil engineer, they can have a bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, or even post-doctoral degree. They are subject to licensure as without obtaining the required license the aspiring civil engineers can not get themselves recognized as civil engineers even if they have a master’s, doctoral, or post-doctoral degree.
To become a civil engineer, the individual needs to have technical training, organizational, written, mathematical, leadership, oral communication, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. The drawing skill, which we think is mandatory to become a civil engineer, is not needed as they usually work with blueprints, maps, etc.
Civil engineers are hardly asked to plan, design, or construct a house. They are more involved in planning, designing, and overseeing the projects like roads, railroads, dams, airports, bridges, pipelines, power plants, channels, harbors, sewage, and irrigation systems.
Civil engineering is now explained, let’s come back to today’s topic and see what civil engineers don’t plan and design.
What do civil engineers do not plan and design?
The civil engineers are polished to handle tougher projects like planning and designing roads, airports, dams, bridges, channels, power plants, pipelines, railroads, and other projects like that. The said engineers can even work on houses but they do not plan, design, and oversee the schools and hospitals projects.
Civil engineers avoid building houses mainly for two reasons
Do civil engineers build houses? is a commonly asked question probably because the individuals belonging to this field are hardly seen building houses. Civil engineers are not normally seen building houses for the following two reasons;
- Their job is to plan, design, and oversee projects. The building is the contractor’s job.
- They are trained to handle tougher projects like roads, railroads, bridges, dams, airports, bridges, pipelines, power plants, channels, harbors, sewage, and irrigation systems.
Lastly, we would like to mention that civil engineers may never be good enough to build a house
As mentioned above, constructing a house is different from planning and designing the house. Even if the civil engineers agree to take the contractor’s training, they may never be as good as the individual who solely belongs to this field. To not be a jack of all trades, the civil engineers usually try to limit themselves to the planning and designing the houses, buildings, bridges, and dams, etc.
In brief, the civil engineer’s job is to plan, design, and oversee a building, bridge, dam, road, railroad, airports, bridges, pipelines, power plants, channels, harbors, sewage, and irrigation systems. The houses that we proudly live in are also planned and designed by the said engineers. They usually plan and design houses, the contractors brought the design to existence. Civil engineers can build houses as well but they would be regarded as contractors at the time building the houses.