Civil Engineering: The Discipline of Engineering - Essay Example

Civil Engineering: The Discipline of Engineering Introduction Civil engineering is a profession in the discipline of engineering. Its main concern is on designing, constructing and maintenance of buildings such as roads, railways, houses and bridges. It is one of the oldest engineering disciplines. It is divided in to smaller disciplines such as: construction, geotechnical, surveying, structural, materials, environmental, transportation, coastal and water engineering. It is an important field to both the public and private sector. In London, 1818, there was a foundation of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Thomas Telford, 1820, was named as the best engineer and he became the president of the institution. The main aim of civil engineering is to make the life of man easy by constructing things as roads that will aid in transportation of goods and services (Blair, 2007). Literature review Civil engineering started to gain recognition in United Kingdom in the late 18th and early 19th century. There was a foundation of very many professional bodies and societies for example, the Law and Royal Society. Form the late 18th century a group of people, civil engineers, met regularly thus led to the formation of a society of Civil Engineers in the year 1771. The person behind all the success was John Smeaton. It is known as Smeatonian Society. This further led to a formation of the institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) whose first president was Thomas Telford. In 1828, ICE gained membership and a Royal Charter. The institution started to publish materials regarding the discipline and thus led to Civil Engineering being recognized as a discipline in the United Kingdom (Blair, 2007). The rising industrialization levels in the United Kingdom called for a development of better transport and housing systems. The demand was high because the country needed to transport its goods and services and it also needed better structures for its industries. An example was the canal system in Britain that played a vital role in water transportation during the industrial revolution time. At that time the road transport system was poor as people relied on horses to transport goods via road. The roads were muddy during the rainy season thus called for a canal system. A national canal network was first established in the UK (Blair, 2007). In the 19th century, new canals emerged; Manchester Ship and Caledonian Canal. Mid 19 century saw railway companies taking over many canals. There was also great competition between the two transport systems. The coming up of the road network system in the 20th century saw the decline of canal usage. There was a total decline in their usage especially after World War II. In 1960 to 1970, the industry of water ways remained open because people used the canals for leisure. Recently, projects of civil engineering led to the Victorian Anderson boat lift being restored. There has been a new creation of the Falkirk Wheel moreover; there are plans to add more canals (Blair, 2007). Sectors in demand There are major sectors of civil engineering that are on high demand. They are: Shropshire transport, roads, waterways and railways. The Shropshire transport system has been dated way back in the Neolithic period. This period saw people changing their life from hunters and gatherers to farmers. The people imported tools to work with thus also exported finished goods. These activities saw the emergence of ridge ways as people developed routes that passed across high grounds. The routes highly avoided boggy and wooden valleys. To date, there are routes that are in existence; Portway and Kerry Ridgeway. The ridge ways are used as foot ways and bridle ways (Blair, 2007). The United Kingdom has a well established railway system. It has three categories of the railways system to meet the different needs of the people. They are: industrial railways, local railways and the main line railway companies (Blair, 2007). Industrial railways: its main coverage is short distances and factories that belong to the collieries, large scale factories and ironworks. It helps in the transportation of the bulky goods and materials from the factories that are moved frequently. It mainly works between sites that are a few miles apart or within a large site. Known examples of industrial railways are Coalbrookdale and Lilleshall companies. Before, large factories owned their own railway networks that used horses or locomotives. The railways were narrow gauged tramways. The wheels were either flanged or plain. The rail was either edged or flanged too. Local railways: as described by the name the railways served local needs and fed into the main line network. Some did have loftier visions though. Examples are: Bishop’s Castle railway, Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway. The main line railway companies: in the 19th century, very many companies joined efforts to build long distance railways. A series of merging and takeover made the system to be owned by two large companies; London and North Western railway and the Great Western railway. Currently the UK has a Railway Engineering Forum (REF) that has recently carried a survey on the ways that are being used to achieve competency in the railway engineering discipline. It plays a major role in promoting matters concerning the railway engineering network. Its main aim is to ensure that the people who are employed in the system are competent enough to work in the complex network system. Before people were controlled in a hierarchical manner and skills were passed from the senior workers to the subordinate workers. There was high skill specification and those who had little knowledge of the work were kept away from fault finding. An employee would work for years in the field. This led to high levels of incompetent work. Today, incompetence is being avoided because of very many reasons. The railway network is no longer owned by the single legal entity of the government. It is being managed by many private sectors and the government. The companies are strict in performance management of the employees thus the reduction of shortcomings and an increase in output. Lastly, there has been an increase in the focus of safety measures to avoid accidents. The railway system has highly improved for there are electric trains that are in use. This has led to the railway network being complex because of the many subdivisions; civil engineering, transaction and rolling stock, signal and telecommunications, permanent way and electrification infrastructure (Blair, 2007). According to the civil engineering profession in Europe, 2004, the public sector is experiencing a small number of engineers working in the UK. The registered engineers in UK are very few and this is seen in all disciplines. The statistics are as follows: Construction- 7.8% Wholesale and retail-0.4% Manufacturing- 39.5% Transport and communications- 6.4% Utilities- 8.9% Mining-0.7% Residential and infrastructure works There has been a decrease in government control in infrastructure since 1979. This is because there has been a specific trend that has been followed. The government has privatized its commercial enterprises. There has been selling of council owned houses by the government. This has led to many Housing Associations being formed which attract a significant number of private and public money that will support the formation of new social housing. The private finance initiative (PFI) was launched by the government to encourage the private sector to support projects like health, transport and so on. The trend has raised approximately fifteen billion pounds (Pollitt, 2000). Currently the PFI projects are three in number. First, the public sector purchases private sector’s services. The public sector buys finished services from the private sector that is responsible for the capital investment of the services. This form of PFI has been used in coming up with new roads and prisons. Secondly, there is the financially free standing project. The private sector designs, builds and operates all its infrastructure then bills the residents and not the government. This has seen the coming up of the toll bridges; Dartford River crossing and the Second Severn Bridge. Third, there is a joint venture of the public and private sector. The government has to offer subsidies for the continuation of projects because the recovery of costs cannot be from the users. This has seen projects such as Manchester’s Metrolink Light Railway and Docklands Light Railway Extension. This provide the possibilities of long term contracts to enable the projects to be completed for example the prison contracts (Pollitt, 2000). Public Health The public health sector is responsible in improving human health. It is involved with informing the general public with measures that they should undertake to improve their health status. It is also responsible in ensuring that the people live in an environment that is not hazardous. It includes ensuring that the buildings are well situated, built, and the sewerage system is well put up. While constructing houses and other buildings, a civil engineer needs to avoid congestion as it makes the spread of diseases very easy. Civil engineers must ensure that people live in houses that are built using the right materials. The bricks and mortars used need to be of the right quality to sustain people during the different seasons. It is a health hazard to live in a house that stores moisture and is always soaking up water. In the UK, death because of poor housing has been documented. During winter very many old people die, and children suffer from asthma. This has led to the calls of raising the standards of housing. There is a plan to use nineteen pounds in repairing the social housing system. The project so far has been of great success as very many homes have benefited from the project. This means that many families are free from dump and cold houses. The problem of homelessness has reduced as the privatization by the government to attract private investors in social housing has increased the number and availability of houses to many. The greatest challenge right now is the affordability of housing. London and South East experience a big problem of affordability (Pollitt, 2000). Roads The main aim of the roads in the UK was to make transport easy. The UK has a liaison group known as the UK Roads Liaison Group (UKRLG). It joins the local and national government to put a high consideration in infrastructure engineering and matters of operations. It includes the bridges, road lighting systems, and traffic management. Bridges include the highway management systems that are put up by the board. The board is greatly involved in giving the government advice on engineering matters concerning footways, carriageways, street lighting, and traffic management. It should be note that the road network of the UK has highly improved over the years. The roads need constant repair as they damage after a period of time. The lighting system and traffic control systems are controllable. The highways and roads are well maintained (Swinerd, 2003). Water supply Civil engineering is responsible in ensuring that the water supply system is well developed. The water supply system is also linked with the sewerage system that is used to pass waste from buildings. All these systems are essential and need proper management and citation. The water supply and sewerage system should not come in to contact to avoid health problems such as cholera and other water borne diseases. The water supply and sanitation system is well established in the UK. It offers good and quality services to the people. It has a well developed and arranged system especially in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Around 96% of the residents in the UK have adequate water and sewerage services. It should be noted that there are ten private regional water and sewerage companies and sixteen water companies in England and Wales. In both Scotland and Northern Ireland, the water and sewerage companies are a single public entity. The water and sewerage system has very low levels of meter sharing. Bills are not in volumetric basis thus majority of the people do not bother about water conservation. Currently, there has been an increase in metering among households (Pollitt, 2000). Coastal protection This field not only relies on civil engineering but also technology, environmental science, economics, consultation procedures, risk evaluation and socio-economic skills. Civil engineers need to put these skills together to enable them to be successful in putting up buildings near the coastal and river areas. The UK has been very successful in coming up with ideas for collection of data in this sector. The problem is that, the ideas are not being put in much consideration. This is so because there is lack of investors and direct ownership. Engineering work near the coast and rivers has very diverse and complicated implications. In the UK, there is a great need to have very large and working physical systems that will be able to make predictions and make changes. This sector has been taken over by the high industry leaders. They understand and practice the risk analysis that impacts these areas (Kamphuis, 2000). There has been a notable increase of population near the costal areas and these calls for more buildings, road networks and generally good infrastructure. The problem comes in when there is need to maintain the environmental system. There is a call for managing and maintaining assets near the coastal and river areas. There is need to implement the right technology in irrigation areas. The adverse population increase has led to a big conflict between development of the areas and environmental protection. The UK is known to have a wide range of coastal and river engineering knowledge due to its adverse experience of the canal transportation. It needs to be in apposition to maintain the environmental needs and meet the demands for development near these areas. UK is known has a global advantage when it comes to the coastal and river engineering sector. It has advanced its technological competency in this particular area. This lead can be sustained if UK continues to invest in new technologies that will enable it to increase its efficiency of protection (Kamphuis, 2000). There is great need for the evaluation of climatic changes and rising sea levels, which help in designing and planning near the areas. There has been the need of applying the neural network technology that deals with full understanding of the processes that make up the natural system. The UK needs to make further research regarding the biological, chemical and physical processes of transportation in the coastal and river areas. There is need for better techniques regarding constructions and stabilization of slopes that are situated under the water. The constructions need to be durable in that the construction materials need to fit either the salty or fresh waters environment. There is also need to have advanced facilities that will handle ships. This will do away with large ports and breakwater constructions (Kamphuis, 2000). Airport development The aviation sector in the UK is growing rapidly. It is has been noted to be a source of employment moreover, it is contributing in the growth of the economy. There is a plan for the UK to expand its airport industry. Although, the airport expansion has its negative implications such as increase in local pollution. It is estimated that 5000 people are at a risk of inhaling the poisonous fumes that are emitted by the planes. The aviation sector has led to high and noticeable climatic changes due to the emission of carbon dioxide gas. At night, residents face the problem of noise pollution and additional airports will mean that there will be an increase in the number of people who will suffer. The expansion will not be good for the UK economy because it will mostly be for leisure and only the rich will utilize the resource. Moreover, many residents of UK prefer spending their leisure time abroad. The UK experiences very few tourists yearly. Lastly, the natural environment is at risk as most of the woodlands have to be done away with to pave way for the airports (Swinerd, 2003). Although the airport expansion has its negative impacts, a new plan for the system has been developed. In 2000, there was an introduction of the local communities’ strategies by the government. The strategies were meant to set out a major plan for every area. In the Act, there was the regional spatial strategy that dealt with conformity of the legal binding development plans and local development frameworks. The framework was made less formal and more flexible. It had two major parts; development plan and local development documents. The development plan project included the area action plans, core strategies and proposal maps. The local development plan included the statement of community involvement and the local development scheme. There was also a supplementary planning document (Swinerd, 2003). There was need to have proposals from the industries, commercial and housing development sector in planning for the airport expansion. The policies that were made needed to be well detailed and clear. They also needed to be short and precise. The maps were to help in planning for areas like the greenbelt and the major development sites. The plan is supposed to make sure that there is reduction of the negative impacts that are going to recur due to the airport expansion (Swinerd, 2003). Developing sustainable construction Sustainable construction entails putting the natural environmental system in to consideration while putting up infrastructure like roads, railways, houses and coastal transportation. There is need to avoid pollution and unnecessary destruction of natural resources such as forests. The UK, though, faces a lot of problems than any other Western country. There are certain set standards that offer the UK the opportunity to adapt and use the current technology in environmental issues. It calls for the need to increase the laws and regulations of issues concerning the environment. It follows the Agenda 21 which was brought up in 1992 in Rio UN. The Agenda deals with sustainability of the environment. Moreover, it tries to increase environmental awareness to the citizens especially the young ones. This is has managed to capture the stake-holders and construction firms. The environmental sector is divided in to four distinctive sectors that each requires different technological know how. overtly environmental projects- There is need to turn the contaminated land to be useful and the UK has proved this as it has the skills Active management of environmental performance of the construction process- the UK has been very successful in implementing the project. It highly regards the environment when it comes to putting up construction work. Services related to environmental management- in this sector the UK has become very strong in implementing this project. Integration of sustainable development- this has helped in improving the long term environmental performance projects that have arisen due to reduced water and energy consumption. The UK is known to put up policies that will improve infrastructure but at the same time it is keen I ensuring that the environmental stability is maintained. Conclusion In conclusion, there are very many engineering job openings because of the high demand of infrastructure expansion. From the discussion, there is need of the airport expansion and very many residents require descent houses for them to live in. due to the integration of construction work and environmental sustainability, it calls for more expertise in this field to avoid environmental degradation. Moreover, the technology keeps changing and there is high demand of better infrastructure, this shows that there will be need for more civil engineers as the construction field will be more complex in future. The demographic level have been rising because of better living conditions, this shows that in future there will be high demand for housing thus the civil engineers will e needed to try and come up with infrastructure that will avoid over crowding and traffic jams. References Blair, J., 2007. Waterways and Canal-building in Medieval England- Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp.19-92. Kamphuis J., 2000. Introduction to Coastal Engineering and Management: Main streets and River Edge. Pp. 36. Pollitt M., 2000. The Declining Role of the State in Infrastructure Investment in UK. Applied Economics. Pp.1-52. Swinerd P., 2003. Sapcecraft Systems Engineering: Roads in the UK. Pp.123. Read More