What is sustainability in construction and civil

engineering?
Sustainability is defined the desire to perform activities without any depletion of
resources or bringing any harmful effect on the environment. Practicing sustainable
construction methods will help avoiding harmful effects from construction activities.

Construction involves activities like use of building materials from various sources, use
of machineries, demolition of existing structures, use of green fields, cutting down of
tress etc. which can impact environment in one or more ways. Civil engineering field
being the major part of the economy, it is very essential that sustainable construction
practice dominate the past followed conventional construction practice and methods.

Need for Sustainable Construction

Construction has a direct impact on the environment due to following reasons:

1. Generation of waste materials

2. Emissions from vehicles, machineries

3. Noise pollution due to use of heavy vehicles and construction machineries.

4. Releases of wastes and pollutants into water, ground and atmosphere.

Sustainability assessment of construction projects is essential to the fact that it does not
create any harmful effects on the living ecosystem while optimizing the cost of
construction. This is to ensure the availability of resources for the future generations.

How to Ensure Sustainable Construction?

In order to support sustainability in the field of construction, the building and the built
environment have to satisfy some of the important criteria. This will include:

1. Biodiversity Enhancement
2. Support to the Community

3. Effective Use of Resources

4. Pollution Reduction

5. Creating Healthy Environment

6. Process Management

1. Biodiversity Enhancement

Sustainable Construction must stop threatening use of environment or species wherever

possible so that the natural habitat is not affected.

2. Support to the Community

Support and help should reach to the real need, aspirations and real requirements. Also
involve the needed in the key decisions.

3. Effective use of resources

Overconsumption of disappropriate amount of resources like land, money, use or

disposal, construction must be stopped. Wastage of resources, materials, water, poor
design is not recommended. The building constructed have to be affordable and
manageable.

Sand and Gravel are being used for thousands of years in construction. The demand for
these is increasing day by day as demand for infrastructure development is increasing.

Over use of construction materials such river sand and gravels also have negative impact
on environment. Excessive sand-and-gravel mining causes the degradation of rivers. Sand
mining results in the lowering of the stream bottom, that results in bank erosion. This
results in the destruction of aquatic and riparian habitat through large changes in the
 channel morphology. The harmful effects include bed degradation, lowered water tables
and channel instability.

There are many harmful impacts of using river sand and mining of gravels and a detailed
study is required to list all the negative impacts. The use of alternate building materials
can reduce the impact of this on environment.

The alternate to river sand is Manufactured Sand (M-Sand) which can be used in
construction works reduce impacts of mining river sand.

Read article on: Manufactured Sand (M-Sand)

4. Pollution Reduction

Less dependency on pollution causing products and materials, transports, power and
energy are encouraged.

Annually billions of tons of demolition waste are generated worldwide for the need for
new construction activities. Improper disposal of these waste tend to be hazardous to the
environment. Below mentioned are some of the methods to make the construction waste
sustainable:

 Elimination of production of construction waste

 Reduction of amount of construction waste
 Reuse construction wastes in other works.
 Recover (recycling, composting, energy) – recycle what you can only after you have reused it.
 Dispose what is left in a responsible way.

Use of durable construction materials and quality control at site for durability of structure
is one step towards minimization of construction waste generation.

5. Creating Healthy Environment

Instead of endangering the health of worker, builders and occupants’ construction must
enhance leisure, living and the working environments.

Around 40% of total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are directly due
to construction and operation of buildings. The best of to reduce this impact is the use of
green buildings construction techniques
Professional Credentials for Civil Engineers: What Do All of Those
Letters Mean?
This is Part 1 of a 3 Part Series on Professional Credentials for Civil Engineers.

While there are many credentials to obtain, EIT and PE are the essentials to
focus on.

By Talmage Hansen, MSCE, GISP, SIT, ENV SP, LEED AP ND, PE, CFM

MSCE = Master of Science in Civil Engineering

GISP = Geographic Information Systems Professional
SIT = Surveyor In Training
ENV SP = Envision Sustainability Professional
LEED AP ND = Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, Accredited Professional, Neighborhood
Development

PE = Professional Engineer

CFM = Certified Floodplain Manager

Although I would never use all of these letters on a business card or signature block, it goes to show that there are a
ton of credentials that building professionals can pursue, and they aren’t all created equal. Some, like the PE
(Professional Engineer), take years of experience, an ABET accredited degree and potentially thousands of dollars.
The PE also carries with it a lot of clout as well as responsibility. On the other hand, others can be obtained in less
than a week, e.g. Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP).

This post focuses on the essential credentials for young civil engineers, since the other categories can vary
significantly from person to person.

First and foremost, if you want to be a successful Civil Engineer, you need to work towards becoming a PE. Other
engineering disciplines may not require it, but Civil Engineering does. Sure there are those without a PE who are
owners at the top of their civil engineering firms, but these are the exceptionsthe outliers. About 99.9% of the time,
the path to becoming a PE starts with a BSCE (Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering), although there still exist
professional experience paths. However, you must ensure it is an accredited engineering degree (EAC/ABET), not
an engineering technology degree (TAC/ABET). Unless you want to jump through more hoops.

Once you have earned the right degree (or even during the last semester), you can take the NCEES FE
(Fundamentals of Engineering) Exam—an 8 hour excruciating test over science, math and all engineering
disciplines. The saying “Cs get degrees” may be true, but they usually don’t get you a passing score on the FE
Exam. I know people who have spent the time and effort to get an engineering degree only to find out that they
didn’t truly learn the material enough to actually pass the FE Exam. It is not one of those tests that you can’t simply
cram for. But once you have passed, you can immediately begin using the EIT (Engineer In Training) designation.

You are now on the path to becoming a PE. You’ll feel pretty proud that first time writing “EIT” after your name.
It’ll help you get that first (or second) job and give you some legitimacy. But after the 3rd and 4th years and getting
more responsibility on projects, you’ll start to resent the diminutive title and long for the shortened, but more
powerful “PE” designation. Keep getting “experience that is acceptable for licensing purposes,” and get ready for
the FE Exam all over again, only this time with an increased focus on Civil Engineering. The Engineering Career
Coach provides a great article on how you can pass the PE Exam without having to study everything.”

While there are many good and relevant credentials that young civil engineers can pursue (and which will be
discussed in subsequent posts), focus on the two most important—EIT and PE.
A Balanced View of Sustainability in Civil
Engineering and Construction(april 2009)
The concept of sustainability is taking a more prominent role in civil engineering and construction
curricula all over the world. Sustainability has environmental, economic and social dimensions;
however, there is a tendency for the social dimension to receive less focus than the other two.
Certainly, with their technical backgrounds and training, the majority of civil engineering and
construction students are better prepared to understand and contribute to the environmental and
economic dimensions of sustainability. Yet, an understanding of all dimensions is necessary to
provide optimal, sustainable solutions to technical problems. The research described in this paper
assesses the evolution of students' understanding of sustainability based on the Global Reporting
Initiative's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. Understanding of sustainability is assessed at the
beginning and end of a Sustainable Construction course. In addition, students in the course perform
one of two types of class projects; a case-study learning project, and a project with a service
learning component. Comparing the results between students performing each project type will
provide insight into each project type's effectiveness in developing students' understanding of
sustainability. This research will reveal the understanding of sustainability inherent in a select group
of Civil Engineering students. The research will also describe the progression of this understanding
during a SustainableConstruction course and during problem-based and service-learning type
projects.

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

 the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which
overriding priority should be given; and
 the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the
environment's ability to meet present and future needs." this is what sustainable
development says.
 thats why now a days civil engineers discuss their projects with
sociologists,economist,ecologist etc to make it sustainable as much as possible.
 few examples like solar top buildings which consume energy from sunlight, city planning
which prevents wastage of land,thus preventing deforestation. etc
 now a days civil engineers cannot proceed with any new project without confirming
ecologist or geologist.