Overview

The United Nations predicts a global population of 9.8 billion by 2050. Consequently, construction professionals are increasingly being called upon to create and maintain the social and commercial infrastructure needed to accommodate such large-scale growth.

Therefore, the demand for Civil Engineers is high in the foreseeable future. In recent years, the demand for civil and structural engineers had continued to rise, particularly in countries such as Australia, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and China. Construction targets aim to reduce cost, deliver faster, reduce emissions and improve exports, all of which rely on a successful infrastructure both in the UK and elsewhere.

This Civil Engineering course is aimed at students who aspire to become professionally qualified engineers and wish to study Civil Engineering with an emphasis on engineering practice and its role within construction, in the UK and abroad. Students will have the opportunity to gain an insight into the full breadth of design and construction disciplines that collaborate in the multi-disciplinary construction industry and value the benefit of practical experience brought to the course by part-time students working in industry, who may also be studying the course.

Course information

Semester 1 of Years 1 to 3 are typically made up of 10 credit modules. The modules aim to deliver the underlying civil engineering theory and assess your individual understanding of that theory within a controlled environment.

During Semester 2 of each year, we aim for you to build upon the underlying theory learnt in Semester 1 (plus any additional supporting theory delivered during semester 2) and apply that theory within the context of an individual civil engineering design project. These modules are essentially taking an integrative assessment approach, where you are required to integrate knowledge from discrete areas of civil engineering. This approach aims to ensure that you understand the application of civil engineering theory to an entire pseudo industry civil engineering project.

During Year 3, you should apply what you have learnt to a research style project, further improving your understanding of a focused area of your own civil engineering interests.

Throughout the degree, you will work as a team in group projects, and as the years advance, you will work in a more integrated way with other construction disciplines, culminating at Year 3 in a fully integrated project based on a real site, working with all other construction disciplines within the university to simulate a ‘real life’ construction project as closely as possible.

Students undertaking the MEng Civil Engineering course have common modules at Year 1 with the MEng Civil and Environmental Engineering courses. At the end of Year 1, MEng Civil Engineering students may change their degree specialism focus and switch to MEng Civil and Environmental Engineering and vice versa. Provision is made for students who demonstrate good academic performance to transfer from BEng Civil Engineering to MEng Civil Engineering, subject to academic regulations which are detailed in the course specification.

As required by University regulations, you will take one 10 credit Add+vantage module at each of Years 1 to 3 of your course. The Add+vantage scheme is a University initiative for broadening students’ studies. There is a large collection of 10 credit modules in a wide variety of areas, many linked to ‘graduateness’ and ‘employability’. The scheme currently includes languages, law, advanced IT and mathematical skills.