Civil Engineering involves many disciplines:

• Structure engineers design high-rise office buildings, factories, hospitals, high tech laboratories, bridges, aircrafts, offshore drilling rigs, transmission towers, nuclear power plants, and other structures. These structures often have special design requirements such as earthquake-resistance, fire-proofing, minimum vibration, long span, light weight, high strength, etc. A design must strive for not only high performance, but also low cost and aesthetics.
• Bridge engineering is a branch of structure engineering. Next time when you drive by a bridge, pay attention to its structure-whether it is an arch, a truss, a suspension, or a cable-stayed bridge. In a building, the structure that carries the load is often hidden. In a bridge, the structure is exposed-you see all the load bearing members.
• Hydraulic engineering is one of the earliest branch of civil engineering. Irrigation channels thousands year old are found in Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. Modern-day hydraulic engineering involves pipe network for water distribution, reservoirs and its hydraulic structures, water conveying systems, drainage systems, flood forecasting and prevention, sediment transport, pollutant transport, and groundwater.
• Transportation engineering deals with transport of goods and people on land, by air, and by water. It examines traffic patterns and uses signs and signals to regulate and to optimize. It also involves pavement, structure, hydraulic drainage, and environmental impact, as the construction of roadways involves all the above issues.
• Geotechical engineering involves the foundation of a structure, which is often hidden from sight, but no less important than the structure itself. High-rise buildings often sit on piles that are tens of meters long driven into ground to reach bedrock. A structure with a poor foundation can settle, crack, tilt, and topple. Geotechnical work is also needed for retaining walls, slope stabilization, dams, tunnels, and other earth structures.
• Environmental engineering used to be called sanitary engineering. Even in ancient times city dwellers knew that it was necessary not only to bring good water into the city for human consumption, but also to collect and discharge bad water away from the city to prevent the spread of disease. The scope of modern-day environmental engineering has been much broadened. It deals with physical, chemical, and biological processes in air pollution, clean and waste water treatment, solid waste disposal, surface water and ground water cleanup, acid rain, lake eutrophication, atmosphere ozone depletion, their prevention and remediation.