Civil engineer vs architect
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William J. Hall Biography
William J. Hall is Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign, and a consulting engineer. He was born in Berkeley, Calif., on April 13, 1926. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and Kings Point (during World War II he served in the Pacific as a Merchant Marine Midshipman). After the war he attended the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan., where he received a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1948. In 1948‑49 he worked as an engineer with the SOHIO Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. In 1949 he began graduate studies in civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign and received an M.S. degree in 1951 and a Ph.D. degree in 1954. He has been a faculty member of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1954, holding the rank of Professor of Civil Engineering since 1959, and Head of the Department from 1984-1991; he retired in 1993. For several years while Head, t
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A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer
“If you’re the type of kid who built whole cities out of blocks in his bedroom, look into civil engineering.” Civil engineers build real cities, from roads and bridges to tunnels, public buildings, and sewer systems. Projects have three phases: preconstruction planning, implementation, and infrastructure maintenance. The preconstruction phase involves surveying land, reviewing plans, assessing funding and needs, then making decisions about schedule, materials, and staffing. Most work is done indoors during this phase. Implementation is where construction begins, and many civil engineers spend considerable time on-site reviewing progress and coordinating all construction. One engineer said, “Sometimes you live out there for two or three days at a time.” Problems must be solved on the spot, and civil engineers are the only ones with the knowledge and responsibility to do so. Infrastructure maintenance, which includes stress tests, evaluations, and on-going support, takes place after construction is finished. Civil engineers move back to their o- •
Civil engineering
Engineering discipline focused on physical infrastructure
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.[1][2]
Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is considered the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering,[3] and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering.[4] Civil engineering can take place in the public sector from municipal public works departments through to federal government agencies, and in the private sector from locally based firms to Fortune Global 500 companies.[5]
History
Civil engineering as a discipline
Civil engineering is the application of physical and scientific principles for solving the problems of so
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