​CIVIL ENGINEERING: CAREER OPTIONS

Information provided by our Careers & Employability Service.

Glen, our Careers Adviser for civil engineering, says:
"Civil engineering is often described as two fields: civil engineering contractors build while consulting civil engineers design and develop; however a range of specialised roles also exist in industries such as highway, geotechnical, and coastal engineering, water and waste management.
The UK construction industry employed 2.5 million people in 2009, including 52,000 civil engineers, and expects to recruit 37,000 new entrants every year to 2013 (Construction Skills Network, Blueprint for UK Construction Skills 2009 to 2013). By comparison with other industries, employment patterns in civil engineering and construction are particularly sensitive to economic conditions. Students joining these programmes in 2011 can expect excellent graduate employment opportunities as the economy recovers for their graduation in 2014" (Estimates of monthly GDP from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research)

Visit the Plymouth University Careers website for more information on any of these areas, or call in to see the Careers & Employability Team in Gateway in the Roland Levinsky Building.

Skills you can develop during this course include:

• Design: innovation, problem solving and investigation, sustainable development
• Management: project management, quality management, team performance development
• Critical thinking, data interpretation and analysis
• People skills: clear communication, presentation, negotiation, providing technical advice

How will civil engineering develop me as a person?
Beyond developing your skills, studying this programme will change you as a person. Students typically become increasingly driven and achievement oriented as they build on practical successes during the course. Our graduates are able to take the initiative and project a resilient, flexible professional image, based on their existing technical and commercial knowledge - and confidence in their ability to understand new and unfamiliar technical information and commercial challenges. 

What do civil engineering students learn in industry?
Here you can watch a video about Plymouth University students’ industry placement experiences. The University encourages and helps civil engineering students to compete for an industry placement year with businesses across the UK and overseas in countries including within Europe and further afield. Civil engineering students participating in work-based learning in the 2010/11 academic year were paid on average around £17,000 and up to around £23,000 per annum by their employers during their placement year. In previous years many returning have received final-year sponsorship and a graduate job offer from their placement employer.

The university’s Placement Office collates and advertises employers’ placement year vacancies. Students access the vacancy listings through the Placement Office website. The University’s Careers & Employability Service teaches students how to target their performance management and convert their skills and experience into winning placement job applications. Both services work with individual students to improve their written applications and interview techniques.

Your work placement experience provides opportunities to put theory into practice, and provides practical experience that makes sense of what you learn in your final year. In addition, students often use a real world problem from their industry experience as the focus for their self-directed final year project, showcased at the University’s nationally acclaimed project open day.