Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)

2022-
2023

BASIC CIVIL ENGINEERING

ROLE OF CIVIL ENGINEERS

A civil engineer has to conceive, plan, estimate, get approval, create and
maintain all civil engineering infrastructure activities. Civil engineer has a
very important role in the development of the following infrastructures:

1. Measure and map the earth’s surface.

2. Plan and develop extensions of towns and cities.
3. Build the suitable structures for the rural and urban areas for various
utilities.
4. Build the tanks and dams to exploit water resources.
5. Build river navigation and flood control projects.
6. Build canals and distributories to take water to agricultural fields.
7. Purify and supply water to needy areas like houses, schools, offices etc.
8. Provide and maintain communication systems like roads, railways,
harbours and airports.
9. Devise systems for control and efficient flow of traffic.
10. Provide, build and maintain drainage and waste water disposal system.
11. Monitor land, water and air pollution, and take measures to control
them. Fast growing industrialization has put heavy responsibilities on civil
engineers to preserve and protect environment.

Civil engineering is a very vast field. It can be classified into:

1. Surveying
2. Construction engineering
3. Structural engineering
4. Earthquake engineering
5. Geotechnical and foundation engineering
6. Quantity surveying
7. Fluid mechanics
8. Irrigation engineering
9. Transportation engineering
10. Environmental engineering
11. Town planning
12. Infrastructural development
13. Project management
14. Remote sensing.

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 Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)
2022-
2023

SURVEYING
1. Surveying is the science of map making. To start any development
activity, the relative positions of various objects in the area with
respect to horizontal and vertical axes through a reference point is
required. This is achieved by surveying the area.
2. Earlier, the conventional instruments like chain, tape and levelling
instruments were used. In this electronic era, modern electronic
equipments like electronic distance meters (EDM) and total stations
are used, to get more accurate results easily.
3. Preparing topo maps of talukas, districts, states and countries and
showing all important features like rivers, hills, forests, lakes, towns
and cities in plan and elevation (by contour lines) also forms part of
surveying.
4. When maps of large areas are to be made corrections for earth
curvature are to be made for all measurements. Such survey is called
geodetic surveying also.

CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING
1. Construction is the major activity of civil engineering. Hence civil
engineer must know properties and uses of basic materials of
construction like stone, bricks, tiles, cement, sand, jelly, steel, glass,
glazed tiles, plaster of paris, paints and varnishes. Behaviour of
reinforced cement concrete (R.C.C.) and prestressed concrete should
be understood properly.
2. Improved versions of many flooring materials, bath room fittings keep
on appearing in the market. Construction engineer should study their
advantages, disadvantages and cost effectiveness.
3. Construction technology should keep pace with the need of modern
trend. In cities building tall structures in shortest possible period is
the requirement while in rural areas and poor need the low cost
housing technology.
4. Construction engineer should know quantity of materials and man
power requirement. He has to plan and execute the work in proper
sequence without wasting man power, material and time of
construction equipments.

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
1. Load acting any structure is ultimately transferred to ground. In doing
so, various components of the structure are subjected to internal
stresses.
2. For example, in a building, load acting on a slab is transferred by slab
to ground through structural components like beams, columns and
footings.

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 Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)
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2023

3. Assessing various types of internal stresses in the components of a

structure is known as structural analysis and finding suitable size of
the structural component is known as structural design. The
structures to be designed may be of masonry, R.C.C., prestressed
concrete or of steel.
4. Structural engineering involves analysis of various structures like
buildings, water tanks, chimneys, bridges etc. and designing them
using suitable materials like masonry, R.C.C., prestressed concrete or
steel.
5. A structural engineer has not only to give a safe structure but he has
to give economical structure. To get economical sections,
mathematical optimization techniques are to be used.

EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING
1. About 50 years ago it was thought, in India, only north-east region
and some parts of north India are earthquake prone areas.
2. But Koyna earthquake, Latur earthquake and Gujarat earthquake
have brought lot of changes in earthquake engineering. India’s map of
earthquake zones showing intensity of earthquake forces to be
considered in different parts of the country has been redrawn.
3. Behaviour of the structures to earthquake forces is dealt in
earthquake engineering. Design of earthquake resistant structure is
attracting lot of research.
4. Studying magnitude, behaviour of structures and designing the
structure for earthquake forces constitute earthquake engineering
branch of civil engineering.

GEOTECHNICAL AND FOUNDATION ENGINEERING

1. Soil property changes from place to place. Even in the same place if
may not be uniform at various depth.
2. The soil property may vary from season to season due to varying
moisture content. The loads from all structures are to be safely
transferred to soil.
3. Hence, safe bearing capacity of the soil is to be properly assessed.
Apart from finding safe bearing capacity for the foundations of
building, geotechnical engineering involves various studies required
for the design of pavements, tunnels, earthen dams, canals and earth
retaining structures.
4. It involves study of ground improvement techniques also.
5. Since stability of every structure depends on how safely load is
transferred to ground, this branch of civil engineering is very
important.

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 Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)
2022-
2023

QUANTITY SURVEYING
1. This is the branch of civil engineering which deals with estimating the
quantity of various materials required for a project work.
2. For example in a building project the quantity of earth work in
foundations, quantity of stones required for the foundation, quantity
of bricks, cement, jelly, sand and steel requirements are to be
assessed for various stages of construction.
3. Estimated cost of the work depends upon the quantity of various
materials required.
4. At the planning stage itself one should have the idea of requirement of
construction materials so that estimated cost is known.
5. Main criteria for selecting any project is its estimated cost. Hence
quantity surveying is an important branch in civil engineering.
6. How to make deduction for quantity of plastering for various types of
openings in the wall, calculating area of painting for various types of
doors and windows etc. also form important aspect of quantity
surveying.
7. Labour requirement for various activities of construction also forms
part of quantity surveying.

FLUID MECHANICS
1. Water is an important fluid required for all living beings. For the
design and construction of hydraulic structure study of mechanics of
water and its flow characteristics is very much essential.
2. This is important field in civil engineering and it is known as fluid
mechanics/hydraulics; fluid mechanics being the general term
applicable to all type of fluids.

IRRIGATION ENGINEERING
1. Water is to be supplied to agricultural field. Hence suitable water
resources are to be identified and water retaining structures are to be
built.
2. Identifying, planning and building water retaining structures like
tanks and dams and carrying stored water to fields is known as water
resources and irrigation engineering.
3. Constructing canals, distributories aquaducts and regulators form
part of irrigation engineering.

TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING
1. Another important amenity that public requires is good roads. Design
of good road involves the design of base courses, surface finishes,
cross drainage works, road intersections, culverts, bridges and
tunnels.

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 Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)
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2. Roads need suitable design of horizontal and vertical curves also.

3. Railway is another important long way transport facility.
4. Design construction and maintenance of railway lines and signal
systems are part of transportation engineering. Design, construction
and maintenance of harbours and airports are also the need of
globalization era.
5. For proper planning of these transport facilities traffic survey is to be
carried out.
All these activities constitute the transportation engineering.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
1. Supplying potable water to rural areas, towns and cities and disposal
of waste water and solid waste is another field of civil engineering.
2. Solid waste management and disposal of electronic waste
systematically is the need for maintaining good environment.
3. Study of sources, causes, effects and remedial measures associated
with air pollution, water pollution, land pollution and noise pollution
forms environmental engineering branch of civil engineering.

TOWN PLANNING
1. New towns and cities and extension areas of existing cities are to be
planned properly so that suitable communication system, educational
facilities medical facilities, shopping centres are provided along with
residential areas.
2. Growing industrialisation of country has brought importance to ‘Town
Planning’ aspect of civil engineering.

INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT
1. Importance of an interdisciplinary approach to total infrastructural
development is necessary.
2. Any new area developed should have proper approach roads,
electricity and water supply, telecommunication facility.
3. Proximity of primary schools, high schools, health care and market
facility should be provided.
4. Civil engineers have to work with other organisation and government
agencies for suitable infrastructure developments for the new as well
as existing localities of the towns and cities.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Planning, scheduling and management forms the basis for taking up a
project.
Planning
Planning is the decision-making process about What, Where, Who and How
(WWWH) to start a project work.
What: An individual or a group of enterprising people or a
government/public sector agency plan to start a project. They form a group
of high level managers. They identify goals, form the objective and identify

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 Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)
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2023

the opportunities of the project. This type of planning is called as strategic

planning.
Where: The next step the strategic planners takes is where to start the
project work.
Who: The strategic planners identifying the middle level and operational
level managers to carry out the task. The middle level management deals
with financial management and coordinates with the operational planners
and strategic planners.
How: The operational planners have to work at minute details of the work
assigned, find the requirement of machinery and work force and plan day to
day activities. They should be ready with alternative plans, if uncertainties
creep in at any stage.

Scheduling
Scheduling is the process of dividing the project into various stages, various
events and identifying time, machinery and human resources required for
each event. For example, the construction of a building may be divided into
the following stages:
1. Mobilizing
2. Laying foundation
3. Building superstructure
4. Finishing.
Laying the foundation may be divided into the following events:
1. Digging
2. Laying bed concrete
3. Constructing stone masonry for foundation
4. Providing coping concrete
5. Pointing the joints and
6. Filling the trenches
Like this all other stages involve a number of events. For each event,
scheduled date of commencement and completion are to be fixed. Material,
equipment and human resources requirement should be identified. For this
bar chart or network representation of events is done.

Critical activities are identified, the delay of which will delay the entire
project. All efforts are concentrated to execute these events as per schedule.

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 Basic Civil Engineering(OE-II)
2022-
2023

REMOTE SENSING
1. Remote sensing is science and art of acquiring information about an
object without physical contact with it.
2. Though human sights and photographs are common examples of
remote sensing,in civil engineering we restrict its meaning to sensing
of the objects on the earth from satellites using electromagnetic
energy.
3. Most of the remote sensing methods make use of the reflected
microwaves, infrared rays and visible light waves in the
electromagnetic spectrum.
4. When the electromagnetic waves sent from satellites strike the earth
surface, its characters change due to transmission, absorption,
emission, scattering and reflection.
5. Since each feature on the earth has different characters, it is possible
to identify the feature on the earth with satellite pictures.
6. Remote sensing is mostly qualitative in nature. Data obtained from
satellite is to be analysed by user and correctly identify the objects.
7. This is called image processing. India has its own remote sensing
satellites such as INSAT series, PSLV series etc.

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