civil Engineering 1

civil Engineering
Civil engineering is the branch of
engineering that applies knowledge of
physics , chemistry and geology to the
development of infrastructure , hydraulic and
transportation works. The name "civil" is due
to its differentiated origin from military
engineering .

It also has a strong organizational component

that achieves its application in the
administration of the urban environment
mainly, and frequently rural; not only in
relation to construction, but also to the
maintenance, control and operation of what is
built, as well as the planning of human life in The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland .
the environment designed from this same
point of view. This includes territorial organization plans such as disaster prevention, traffic and transportation
control, water resource management, public services, garbage treatment and all those activities that guarantee the
well-being of humanity that develops its life on the civil works built and operated by engineers.
Due to the great importance of these infrastructures for the development of a State , this branch of engineering is
recognized in all countries, regardless of the specific name given to its degree. In Spain , for example, until 2010, its
name was marked by two types of degrees: Technical Engineering of Public Works (ITOP) and Engineering of
Roads, Canals and Ports (ICCP).

Branches of civil engineering

Structural engineering
Structural engineering is responsible for estimating the maximum
resistance of elements subjected to variable loads, permanent loads and
eventual loads (earthquakes, winds, snow, etc.), seeking a minimum
state of service at the lowest possible cost.

Geotechnical Engineering
Geotechnical engineering is responsible for estimating the resistance
between particles of the Earth's crust of different nature, granulometry,
humidity, cohesion, and soil properties in general, in order to ensure the
interaction of the soil with the structure. It also carries out the design of
the foundation or support for buildings, bridges, etc...

Hydraulic Engineering (also known as water resources Civil Works: Construction of a dam in
engineering) Navarra .

• Design of canals and hydraulic works in general

civil Engineering 2

Transportation and Road Infrastructure Engineering

Concept of Transportation and Road Engineering:
Transportation and Highway Engineering is understood as the set of knowledge, skills, professional practices,
principles and values necessary to satisfy social needs regarding the mobility of people and goods.
Transportation and Highway Engineering is a specialty of the engineering profession, based on the application of
physical, mathematical, chemical, technical and ingenuity sciences, for the benefit of humanity.
• Transportation planning
• Transportation economics
• Pavement design and maintenance
• Design of urban cycle paths
• Geometric road design
• parking lot design

Construction Management and Engineering

It is the branch of civil engineering that is responsible for making estimates of how much a certain project will cost,
the time it will take to complete a work, processing the corresponding permits at the time of starting a project,
preparing contracts between the owner and engineer, carry out inspections to corroborate that everything is done
according to the predetermined plans and specifications, carry out the calendar of activities by which the contractor
will be governed to carry out the work, carry out project management among other aspects.
Construction Management is not difficult, but it has its demands. It requires intelligent people who have: 1) The
ability to work as a team, 2) A clear vision of the process, and, 3) Systems that make it easier for them to manage the
details.
Working well with other people is essential: no matter how brilliant we may be, things are going to go wrong if others
don't want our success ... . and our success is closely linked to the success of the project.
Being smart helps, but smart people generally prefer to handle concepts and delegate details to others. In Construction
Management, both qualities are required: intelligence to handle the general concepts of project management and
diligence to be aware of all the details.
Project Management must use computers, they can be in charge of organizing and managing the details, but it is the
man who poses the problems, who judges and who produces the results, line by line, game by game.
civil Engineering 3

Fields of application
Its scope is very broad. There would be, for example, transport
infrastructure:
• Airport s • Highway s • Highway s • Railways • Ports • Bridge s
• Urban transport networks
Hydraulic works:
• Sewerage
• Azud is
• Canals for transporting drinking water or irrigation
• Navigation channels
• Drinking water pipes
• Hydroelectric power plants
• Purifiers
• Dam s • Lock s • Dock s. • Dams Civil works: construction of a false tunnel in
Burgos .
Intervention on land stability problems .
The structures that make up the previous works.
• Embankments
• Dismantle s
• Land containment works
• tunnel is
• Shoes
• Pillar is • Beam s.
• Bridge abutments
In general, Civil Engineering works involve the work of a large number of people (sometimes hundreds and even
thousands) over periods ranging from a few weeks or months to several years.
Due to the high cost of the work carried out (think of the cost of a highway or a railway line), a good part of the work
carried out is for the State, or for large companies that intend to operate an infrastructure. in the long term (toll roads
and tunnels, railway companies, etc.). However, their techniques are also applied to works similar to the previous
ones but on a smaller scale, such as:
• The containment of difficult terrain in the excavation for the foundation of a building.
• The execution of the structure of a building .
• The design and execution of the drinking water and sewage distribution systems of a small population (including
drinking water treatment stations (DWTP), pumping equipment, wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), etc.
• The design and urbanization of the streets of a small town
civil Engineering 4

In addition, the following are also the responsibility of a Civil Engineer:

• The planning, design and control of urban transport systems, including the design of interchanges and the creation
of new lines or modification of existing ones.
• Adoption of new transportation systems that do not exist at the time, such as subway lines or light rail (more
commonly known as tram ).
• Planning, execution and administration of waste treatment or incineration plants and landfills.
• Auxiliary engineering tasks (quality control, laboratory tests, supervision of health and safety issues).
• Maintenance of all the above
In this way, a Civil Engineer is not limited to large infrastructure works, which are very rare due to their high cost.

Knowledge areas
The knowledge necessary to practice as a civil engineer are:
• Knowledge of stress and deformation calculations in
structure s in the face of different actions (behavior of the beams of a
bridge in the face of the passage of a train , of a dam in the face of
the hydrostatic pressure of the water it retains, of a footing in
transmitting the weight of the structure it supports to the ground.
• Knowledge of the materials that will be used in the execution of the
work (resistance, weight, aging, etc.).
• Knowledge of the behavior of the terrain in response to the requests
of the structures that rest on it (bearing capacity, stability in the face
of said requests, etc.).
• Knowledge of Hydrology to calculate floods or flows for the design
of dams or weirs, dimensioning of bridge spans, etc.
• Knowledge of capacity calculation techniques for road sizing, etc.
• Knowledge of aesthetics, history, art, landscape, etc.
• In Spain, as in France, knowledge of urban planning and
of territorial planning, which allow you to understand the strong
territorial and population planning implications of large
infrastructure works. Civil works: Excavator working.
• And, of course, knowledge of the procedures, techniques and
machinery necessary for the application of the previous knowledge.
In general, there are a large number of possible technical solutions for the same problem and many times none of
them is clearly preferable to another. It is the job of a Civil Engineer to know all of them to rule out the least suitable
ones and study only the most promising ones, thus saving time and money. It is also the job of the Civil Engineer to
know the possible ways of executing the adopted solution or the machinery available for it. They must also have the
necessary knowledge to evaluate the possible problems that may arise in the work and make the correct decision,
considering, among others, social and environmental aspects.
For all this, in addition to solid training, extensive work experience is vital in the work of a Civil Engineer, allowing
him to recognize the problem at a glance and adopt solutions that have demonstrated their reliability in the past.
civil Engineering 5

Praxis of Civil Engineering

The work of a Civil Engineer begins when a certain need is noticed (a
new dock in a port, the expansion or construction of a road, a dam that
provides continuity and stability to the flow of a river ... ). In this
planning stage, civil engineers work in an integrated manner with other
professionals and national or local authorities with decision-making
power.

Then comes the work of collecting the data necessary to design a

solution to said need, data that can be topographic (measurement of the
real surface of the land), hydrological ( rainfall of a basin , flow of a
river, etc.) , statistics ( capacity of existing roads or streets, population
densities), etc.

For this purpose, the designs of the most complex works and systems
Civil works: light metro in Bilbao .
are done in several stages. The first stage, called pre-feasibility , is
responsible for analyzing the greatest number of possible solutions. It is
at this stage in which the competent organizations will decide, for example: the location of a port, the general layout
of a highway or will make the decision regarding whether to build a railway to transport minerals or a mineral
pipeline. For decision making, the following points of view are considered, among others: difficulty of the work; cost
of the work; environmental impact produced by the work. The pre-feasibility study involves a multidisciplinary team
of technicians, where in addition to civil engineers, electrical engineers, mechanics, geologists, economists,
sociologists, and ecologists participate. As a result of this phase, 2 or 3 solutions are chosen to be detailed in the next
stage.

In the next stage, called technical-economic feasibility , much progress has already been made in the construction
details, in the determination of costs, in the construction schedule and in the cash flow necessary for the execution of
the work. At this stage, field investigations have a lot of weight to detect specific difficulties related to the geology of
the areas in which the intervention will be carried out, and the environmental impacts will be detailed, including both
the physical, biotic and social aspects. In general, it is in this phase that the final solution is chosen, which will be
detailed in the final design or executive project stage.
Then comes the real work on the land: conditioning it so
that it is capable of supporting the structures that are
going to be built on it (sometimes even replacing the
land with another one with greater load-bearing capacity
if the existing one does not meet the necessary
conditions), earthworks (clearings and embankments),
construction of structures (piles, footings, pillars,
abutments, beams, retaining walls … ) …

However, all these steps are rarely carried out smoothly,

much less the responsibility of the same Engineering
The 20-story Alto Río [] building, Concepción, collapsed as a result team. Thus, it is often the engineers of the corresponding
of the 2010 Chile earthquake , being the only one in the country,
Administration who detect the need that will be solved,
after one of the largest earthquakes in the world (8.8 MW),
demonstrating that Chile is structurally prepared for resist them. while on other occasions the work is included within a
political action plan (not always with a clear technical
justification).

If the work to be undertaken is large-scale, the Administration does not execute it, but rather its engineers prepare a
preliminary project that is put out to public auction. Then it is the engineers of the different construction companies
civil Engineering 6

who, based on the technical prescriptions of the preliminary project, develop different alternatives. The alternatives
offered by the construction companies may be very different from the preliminary project and from each other, since
each company uses the machinery and procedures that are best known to it, and the Administration will choose the
cheapest of the options that meet the requirements.
The engineers who carry out the work do not have to be (nor generally are) the ones who designed it. The
construction company may also decide to subcontract different jobs to other companies, so there may be different
companies for the same work (one executes the earthworks, another the concrete structures ... ) each with its
corresponding Engineering department. and its corresponding team of engineers on site.
Very often, due to the unpredictability of the terrain, problems occur on site that require modifications to the project;
On other occasions, the Administration may decide to vary some conditions or requirements as the work develops and
problems or possibilities are observed that had not been studied or that were not considered important at the time the
preliminary project was prepared. It may happen that a new infrastructure requires modifications or the possibility
arises that two different works, built by different companies (of course with different teams of Engineers) are
executed together ... .
All this can give an idea of the large number of variables that affect the work of Civil Engineering. Fortunately, large-
scale works are rare, and more often the Civil Engineer is limited to supervising the work and making specific
decisions on specific problems that do not affect the development or general budget of the work. Thus, works such as
the containment of a terrain with usual characteristics, the placement of a prestressed beam or the execution of a
pavement, are routine works that do not imply significant changes to the project.
• d Portal:Engineering . Engineering related content.
• e Wikimedia Commons hosts multimedia content on Civil Engineering . Commons

References
[1] http://www. Youtube. com/watch?v=uEGyNJ06LIw
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Sources and contributors of the article

Civil engineering Source : http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=38440395 Contributors : Akhran, Alejogeovanny, Alfredobi, Alhen, Ander.romero, Antur,
Banderas, Camr, Cheat, Chlewey, Cobalttempest, Cookie , Correogsk, Davius, Der Kreole, Diegusjaimes, Digigalos, Dodo, Emijrp, Eoromendia, Ercoman,
Estrafalarius, FAR, Fertejol, Folkroker, Fronate, Futbolero, Gala242, Gallego1977, Gepetto, Gizmo II, Gmac01, Greek, Gusgus, Humberto, Héctor Guido Calvo,
Ialad, Ingegneriadell´elizia, Isha, Jjvaca, Jofermor, Josemariatamac, Kadellar, Kristinawaleska, LMLM, Lema, Luis 251290, Macalla, Makete, Mandramas,
Manuelt15, Marcelovich, Matdrodes, Maximiranda, Miguelaccp, Miguelrvb, Mister, Nitspy, Obelix83, Orgullomoore, Petronas, Pinrock, Platonides, PoLuX124, Raul
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Tronch, Txuspe, Ty25, Usuwiki, Verwolff , Vitamine, WikiMathema, Yeza, 201 anonymous edits

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