You use your education, experiences o be able to solve the problems which make it more fun if you're the kind of person that like to solve problems. There are several positions, you can choose to sit in front of the computer the whole day or to solve different problems and involve with clients. Ass's department is small, just him, his manager, drilling crew. What his department does is testing the soil and make sure it's good before they Start to build the building. They will do drilling process out in the field and bring samples to the lab to do lab tests.What he does is manage the drilling activities and the lab testing.
When he got his bachelor degree, at the time he was studying for his master degree, he taught lab for 2 years. Civil Engineering has different branches such as structural, water, transportation, categorical, environmental, and general civil. Basically, Categorical Engineering is dealing with soil, rock, etc...
For example, before building a house, they have to check to explore the soil and make sure that they don't have any problems, make sure the soil is good to build the house on top, and if there's any problem, they have to find a way to solve it.They usually have to work with structural engineers, civil engineers, sometimes they have to work with bankers, developers, the ones that buy the lands. They have to deal with different people every single day, some of them are engineers, some of them are not, so they have to understand who they are dealing with and they have to be very careful how to approach them and know how to talk and make them understand. The hardest thing in the major as he said is to keep the balance between engineering and business, and they kind of do a little bit of everything.
Talking about a normal day at work, typically in the morning, they get to work and check their voice mails and e- mails, and base on those, they plan their day because usually the mails contain information that asks them for proposals about the projects. For example, there'll be a project says that new building is going to open somewhere with the sketch of the building, and they want his department to proposal basically tell them how much would it cost to do their services, and usually the owner ask them to give a proposal telling that they would do this mount of work for this price.After that, they organize and provide instruction for drillers in the field then they will go to the lab to assign lab tests. When the field work and lab work are done, they review the results from both to write report (contain the history Of the site, what kind Of building the field exploration, lab testing, the results) and provide recommendation how to design foundation, and how to do the construction work that is related to the soil.
After they submit the report to the client, they ill ask if the client satisfied with their report like a survey to see if they have any question.They will try to build up the relationship between company and clients, so by that way they can have more business. Sometimes they will take their clients out for lunch to talk about business. This is what's good about engineering, they don't have to only sit at work and design stuff, but they also get to go out deal with people or even travel.
They do a lot of advance testing in their company, so sometimes they will be asked to go out of state to other project sites to do testing.Talking about different engineering position, for civil engineering, they have different branches. They have general civil engineering, structural engineering, categorical engineering water engineering, transportation engineering, environmental engineering, basically that's everything you see when you drive around such as buildings, roads, airport, and bridges, everything that is man made. When you go to college, you have to take every class about civil, typically two or three classes of each, so you can have a good general idea about civil engineering.About job opportunity, it was harder to get a job around 4 years ago, but now it Seems to be easier for engineering.
After getting their bachelor degrees, some people will decide to go looking for a job, but some will decide to stay back and get the Master degrees. Some of the branches actually require Master degree and it would be very difficult to get a job without a Master degree, for example structural and categorical engineering. The economy is growing, and they have more business, they don't really have time to train. They expect you to be able to work for them when you get the job.
The bachelor degree is good, but it's not good enough when the master degree is what really prepares you for work. About salary, it all depends on the branch and company because some companies go with national average, but some companies go with state average. However, after graduate from college, the average salary is around $45. 000, highest is around $58.
000, and lowest is around 538. 000. About job trends and prospects for openings when you graduate, universities now are doing very good jobs create opportunity for their students.
