Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage systems, pipelines, structural components of buildings and railways.
In other words, Civil engineering is the application of physical and scientific principles for the design, development and maintenance of both the constructed and the naturally built environment. This includes infrastructure such as airports, bridges, buildings, canals, dams, pipelines, power plants, railways, roads, sewage systems, and more.
In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in London. The institution received a Royal charter in 1828, formally recognizing civil engineering as a profession. Its charter defined civil engineering as:
“the
art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and
convenience of man, as the means of production and of traffic in states, both
for external and internal trade, as applied in the construction of roads,
bridges, aqueducts, canals, river navigation and docks for internal intercourse
and exchange, and in the construction of ports, harbours, moles, breakwaters
and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by artificial power for the
purposes of commerce, and in the construction and application of machinery, and
in the drainage of cities and towns.”
Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is considered the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering and the term was first used in the 18th century to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering. The broad nature and long history of civil engineering means that its own growth as a discipline is closely associated to the development of human knowledge in areas including physics, mathematics, structures and construction, geography, geology, hydrology, environmental and materials sciences, mechanics, and more. Civil engineering is one of the oldest and broadest engineering professions. It focuses on the infrastructure necessary to support a civilized society.
From earliest times, however, engineers have engaged in peaceful activities, and many of the civil engineering works of ancient and medieval times—such as the Roman public baths, roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Flemish canals; the Dutch sea defenses; the French Gothic cathedrals; and many other monuments—reveal a history of inventive genius and persistent experimentation. Scientific principles, such as those developed by the ancient Greek Archimedes of Syracuse, were applied as they were understood, helping to drive engineering forward, which continues to this day with new innovations and research.
Civil engineering is the professional practice of designing and developing infrastructure projects. This can be on a huge scale, such as the development of nationwide transport systems or water supply networks, or on a smaller scale, such as the development of individual roads or buildings.
The Roman aqueducts, the great European cathedrals, and the earliest metal bridges were built by highly skilled forerunners of the modern civil engineer. These craftsmen of old relied on their intuition, trade skills, and experience-based design rules or heuristics, derived from years of trial and error experiments but rarely passed on to the next generation.
