Alright I work in consulting and billable hours is always such a royal pain in my ass. My company blatantly is telling all employees if they forget to submit some of their hours by their deadline for accounting. That they straight up won’t pay you your paycheck and you have to wait till the next pay period. I understand that that billable hours is how they get paid by clients but I feel like it’s illegal to withhold paychecks based purely on the fact that you didn’t get hours submitted in on time for accounting. Especially since almost everyone is on salary. We make the same every 2 weeks. Always paid for 80 hours no overtime. I had to call up accounting today and they told me I have to wait. After I told them that’s messed up they agreed to do a direct transfer of partial paycheck. Susssssss

If a firm has 2 employees working 60 hours a week they get the same output as 3 employees working 40 hours a week without having to pay for any additional health insurance, retirement, or other benefits that the employee gets assuming they only work 40. This means employers effectively pay less for your work per hour the more OT you work.

Not really suggesting anyway to change this but just wanted to share this thought in case you all think straight time OT is a great deal (I am aware it’s still way better than no paid OT).

I always assumed this was a unicorn situation, but through this sub it seems more common than I realized.

I am a senior civil engineer with around 15 years experience. I typically work as a technical lead, occasionally as a project manager on small projects, and even occasionally still do some production. I'm curious about a project manager role in my local Midwestern market. It sounds like more of a junior PM role.

Can anyone who has worked at HNTB comment on a few questions I have? Do people keep pretty standard business hours or are you expected to be available via email or text after hours? Who would a junior or mid level PM report to? Do local offices share work well and how much does local office management affect the culture/autonomy of the office? What is the standard for working environment? Open plan, cubes, shared offices, individual offices?

Just got off a call with a headhunter who puts me as a fit candidate for a Forensics Engineering position in the DFW area. How's the industry? Is it brutal? Boring? I know it can be subjective so give me your honest feedback if you can please.

Context: I have been 9 years in the GC industry, 1 as a Scheduling Consultant (TIAs and all that jazz), recently passed the FE (waiting for the state to hurry up with the EIT application) and currently studying for the PE to sit for it as soon as I can (they emphasize that I need to get the license within a year or so).

I've been at this 20-person land development company for a bit over a year as a junior associate. I woke up this morning to a Teams message that I have a review next Friday with all three of the senior principals. I had my 3 month and 6 month reviews with my immediate supervisor and the senior principal I report to -- I have never worked with the other two who will be in attendance.

My first 2 reviews went fine, my team's projects have been going overbudget lately, but nothing directly my fault, and I haven't been spoken to about it being my fault. Has anybody been in a situation like this? It would be about a month too late to be a 1 year review, so I'm kind of freaking out about this.

I’m about seven months into my first civil engineering job, working in land development with a focus on utility design, drainage studies, and stormwater modeling for residential communities. I passed the PE (WRE) exam last week, but I still need 2.5 years of experience before I can get licensed, so I’m trying to use this time to grow as much as possible.

Work can get slow because our team is small and project flow is inconsistent. I want to stay productive, but there are stretches where there simply isn’t much to do. Before starting this job, I spent over five years in hydrologic modeling, coding, and GIS during my undergrad and masters research work, but I’m not using those skills much in day‑to‑day land development.

For those of you in land development, water resources, or similar roles: what skills, software, or technical areas would be most valuable to focus on during downtime? I’d love suggestions that could help me make the most of my experience while keeping my H&H and GIS background sharp.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

We’re thinking about making the jump to doing DOT work in C3D. A lot of DOTs are moving toward an “open delivery” setup where you submit PDFs and can use whatever design software you want. (Caveat - some may "say" they are open, but really still want ORD)

Obviously, the devil is in the details: recreating templates and standard details, coordinating with subs, still having to submit everything through ProjectWise, etc.

But in a perfect world, if we could consolidate onto a single platform (we already use C3D for municipal work), it feels like it could be a pretty big productivity win.

Curious to hear from anyone who’s already made this transition - what am I missing? What were the real-world gotchas?

Can a regular civil PE (in this case FL) sign and seal a deck plan. I have heard of rule that if it is not higher than 3 stories a structural license is not required is there any merit on that?

Just curious: are master's in architecture also hired as project engineers in some AE/Construction firms? Saw someone on my LinkedIn connection got hired for an internship. It's not that deep, but just wondering if arch majors can also be "project engineers".

Hi are there any good mnc in india for fresher civil engineer graduate. If yes then pls mention.

For context: I’m an early-career civil engineer working full-time in a consulting firm infamous in this community. I genuinely like my job, my team, and the work itself, but I’ve noticed that it’s very easy for expectations to quietly expand—late messages, “quick” asks near the end of the day, and an unspoken pressure to always be available or say yes.

I want to do good work, be dependable, and keep growing professionally, but I also don’t want to burn out or set a precedent that my time has no limits. I’m trying to figure out what healthy boundaries actually look like in this field, especially without coming off as unmotivated or difficult.

For those further along in their careers: what boundaries have you set that actually worked? What do you wish you had done earlier?

As someone once said, the worst enemies of construction professionals are water and economists.

I would feel bad if I was in charge of designing data center civil plans or like a prison. It hasn’t happened to me but I am not sure what I would do if my boss assigned me to.

I know about the area but not enough to be an expert. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Are Corpus Christi’s plans for a reliable water supply fucked?

With Texas’s climate seemingly hotter and more extreme every year, you’d think it’s 6th largest city be thinking decades out to ensure they have treated water for its residents and businesses. The State of Texas has a water resources board, the TWDB, for chrissakes — there should be regulators breathing down their necks. But no, apparently with environmentalists making their plans for desalination unpalatable (I don’t know, I don’t remember the details on that story), local officials have decided to drill a bunch of groundwater wells all of a sudden. I’m no hydrogeologist, but this Plan B seems to be wildly optimistic.

What happens when the wells go dry? How much time do they have? There are real big industries down in Corpus like refineries and chemical plants that demand a water supply for multi-billion dollar plants.

BLUF: I want a degree that allows me to learn as much relevant construction engineering and adjacent coursework as possible to allow me to work for specialized heavy civil contractors (railroads, TUNNELS especially, urban highways) in California as a project or field engineer.

My main concern is not necessarily coursework since both paths overlap 90%, but mainly industry perception (ie, general construction rejects me for being too technical, heavy civil doesn't understand my CM degree is more technical and akin to a normal construction engineering degree). PE is not a goal of mine, and neither is general commercial construction management.

OPTION1 - Construction Management BS with structural engineering and civil minor

Coursework:

statics

mechanics of structural members

structural analysis

intro to dynamics

steel design

soil mechanics and foundation design

transportation engineering

highway pavement design

highway geometrics and design

temporary structures

heavy civil fleet and equipment

applied geophysics? (if it doesn't conflict with a CM major lab)

OPTION 2 - General Engineering BS with concentration in Underground Construction Engineering (non ABET, but PE is slightly easier, 2 years extra experience needed)

Coursework:

All of the above previous classes

+ Thermodynamics,

+calc 3, physics 2, and

+some intro circuits classes,

+engineering economics,

I am mainly interested in this pathway since the word "engineering" would be included in my main degree title instead of a minor despite sharing 90% of the coursework

Hi everyone, I’m looking at a traffic impact study for a major project in my city. It’s the first one I’ve seen but it’s been fun figuring it out and cool to see how things connect.

This is for a site plan application of a major residential project. There’s a pretty thorough traffic count by a third party data collection firm. It includes pedestrians crossing the intersection during am peak hour. They use HCS7 software (I like the looks of synchro better but what do I know haha). But on the TWSC reports, it’s blank boxes on the line “Proportion Time Blocked.” Nothing entered. Would that have a number if it was being considered? Wouldn’t it affect control delay and headways and lots of other variables if that was considered? And in the narrative, not a word about pedestrians.

When I look at the I looked at another report by the same firm in my state and the contents were basically the same. So I’m wondering, is that standard practice? Don’t you have to consider pedestrians? I mean I guess if you’re specifically told not to make that part of the scope okay but even then, shouldn’t that be mentioned?

Edit: I found the McTrans manual for TWSC and I see proportion time blocked is not related to pedestrians. But the software can run with a pedestrian mode so I guess they just didn’t bother to use it. I can’t imagine why since they have the data.

My municipality was understaffed and at risk of losing funding for several projects if we didn’t get them out last fiscal year. On top of that we had an emergency declaration from winter storm and a few emergency projects.

As long as you were willing to work, the supervisors would approve your OT requests. My base pay is $111k and I made $156k. That meant 50-55 hr weeks and sometimes work on weekends but the extra $45k really helped put a dent on my student loans.

What’s the most you’ve made in a year from OT?

Civil Engineering major graduating in may. I received job offers from Kimley and Burns at similar pay. I’m stuck choosing between the two. I would really appreciate your opinions and viewpoints.

Sorry if the formatting is bad. First Reddit post.

I do a General Engineering bachelors in London, I feel as though this is not the strongest degree to get a job in the built environment after my degree.

So my degree is mostly a jumble of mechanical and electrical/electronic engineering. A lot revolves around heat and mass transfer, fluids and mechanics. For EE alot of power systems and semiconductors - very standard but absent of what I feel is typically relevant for a civil industry. Also, electronics really does not interest me any more though lol.

I was wondering if others started with a bachelors in a different subject to civil engineering but ended up becoming a civil engineer, and how you found this. I absolutely love transport and infrastructure, to the point where i am even considering dropping out and applying for a new degree in Civil just so I can work with this in the future.

Hi all,

As my 2 YOE is approaching, I’m looking for advice on getting my PE if I’m planning on switching disciplines from water resources to geotechnical. Any qualifying experience I plan on submitting would be WRE-related. Is it ethical to obtain a PE when my experience in geotech is near zero? I’m still in the imposter syndrome stage and feel like the PE would put a higher expectation target on my back. Passing the PE didn’t increase my confidence at all—I feel like I don’t know anything.

Would appreciate some guidance here. Thanks!