EngSpotlight Perspective Series: Civil Engineering

Parmveer Sohal
1st-Year Civil Engineering
First-Year Ambassador

I thought civil engineering was just about buildings, but I realized that it’s also about sewer systems, water pipes, railways and transportation. It’s very diverse!

Are there any resources or facilities that helped you transition from high school to university?

Actually, there were a lot of resources that helped. I’ll start off with the First-Year Engineering Office. When I first came here to TMU they helped me with course selection. And then later on, I realized, there's also free tutoring that they offer called ACES. ACES is a tutoring program for engineering courses hosted by the First-Year Engineering Office. They host both online and in-person sessions. I really use them a lot! 

Amartya Mishra 
2nd-Year Civil Engineering
Research Assistent

Here at TMU, there are a lot of extracurricular opportunities available to you. There are a lot of design teams, course unions and chapter organizations involved with the civil engineering program. The design team I work with is the concrete canoe team in which we build a canoe for a nation-wide competition.

What has been your favorite part of studying civil engineering at TMU so far?

My favorite part about starting civil engineering at TMU has been the research work I've been doing over the summer. It's something I really enjoy. I took a course last semester with a professor about geotechnical properties and my research is building on that course. My research work is on CFA piles. It's a type of pile foundation which supports different structures. It's a deep foundation so it's mostly used for very large infrastructure. Doing this work gives me a broader perspective on civil engineering. Through this work, I tried looking at the bigger picture that came beyond my courses and learned how to use the knowledge I learned inside the classroom out in the field.

Amraj Grewal 
3rd-Year Civil Engineering
Project Coordinator Placement, Ontario Transit Group

TMU offers a wide range of courses, and I feel like it gives you a well-rounded experience of how infrastructure works, and if you want to build something, how that would happen. I took surveying and project management courses, and they’re really helping right now in my placement!

What kind of specializations and streams does TMU offer in Civil Engineering?

After you complete your second year, you can either choose to go into general civil engineering or structural engineering. After that, in your fourth year, general civil specializes in two streams: environmental engineering and transportation engineering. So if you want to go into structural engineering, you have to make that decision at the end of your second year. If you want to specialize later on, and you're stuck between environmental and transportation, you can make that choice before your fourth year. So the difference between transportation and general civil is you get to work more on highway design on roads. Environmental engineering involves water, so if you want to work on things like water distribution, water recycling facilities that we have, that's what the environmental stream encompasses. For structural, it's anything to do with structures, so buildings, bridges, tunnels. Almost everything involves structures, which is another reason why I chose to go into structural engineering.

Jazz Gaudette 
4th-Year Civil Engineering
Graduate & WiE

My time in the program really taught me a sense of resilience. I went through multiple challenges and had a few failures throughout my undergraduate degree. For me, now approaching challenges and those things in industry seem a lot more realistic and a lot more doable than they would have in my first year.

Have your co-op or internship experiences influence the kind of job you're looking for now in the civil engineering field?

My co-op and internship experiences have definitely affected what kind of opportunities I'm looking for. I did two summer internships during my undergraduate career which were completely different from one another. I did one at a construction company and I did one at a consulting company, and I'm returning to the consulting company after graduation. But for me, my experiences really impacted the way I look at projects that I'm approaching in consulting now. I look to see how I can make things more efficient for construction companies in terms of consulting. I also learned that my consulting job is really broad. You can specialize in different areas, and I love it there!