Studying Civil Engineering

Do skyscrapers fascinate you? Do you vision yourself building dams, bridges, expressways, highways, airports and tunnels? Then, civil engineering might be just the course for you! And a civil engineering from UK should be your first choice.

Civil Engineering is the engineering discipline concerned with the design, building and use of dams, buildings, bridges, roads and similar structures. There are many different kinds of buildings (hospitals, airports) and infrastructure (roads, water pipes, mines) that are integral to any city or modern human settlement. For this reason, civil engineering can be further divided into sub-disciplines. Structural engineering would be an example of this.

The UK is at the forefront of civil engineering teaching, learning and research. There are about 56 universities offering study programmes in civil engineering and its sub-disciplines. And they are top class courses at the masters level. While at the at the undergraduate level, you will get a general overview of civil engineering.

At the postgraduate level, you could choose to specialise in any of the sub-disciplines of civil engineering or you could club a generic civil engineering degree with an engineering or project management specialisations. Some of the most popular and in-demand specialisations are structural engineering, water engineering and construction management.

Both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, students have an option to undertake paid work placements spanning anywhere between a few weeks to one full year.

Salary and Career Prospects

Civil engineers are employed by construction companies (Balfour Beatty, Carillion, and Skanska), electricity and power companies (EDF, British Gas), utilities (United Utilities), petroleum companies (Shell, BP), manufacturing (Mars, Unilever), the government and academia.

Some of the popular roles graduates take up are:

• Consulting Civil Engineer
• Structural Engineer
• Building Control Surveyor
• Design Engineer
• Site Engineer

There is a severe shortage of suitably qualified civil engineers in the UK. New graduates can expect to around £23,500 (around 21 lakhs INR), but with experience and additional certifications, this could go over £80,000 (over 73 lakhs INR).

Why Study in the UK?

The UK is a world-renowned seat of learning, teaching and research with 3 universities in top 10 and 7 in top 50 in THE World Rankings 2018. UK government is investing heavily in major engineering projects like HS2, Cross Rail (rail projects), Birmingham City Project, Hinkley Point (nuclear power plants) and in motorway upgrades.

UK is home to some of world’s most prestigious engineering companies like Balfour Beatty, Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Siemens and Skanska.

It is possible for students to remain in the UK after finishing their studies provided they meet the prevailing visa requirements.