Civil Engineering Heriot-Watt University

Overview

Civil Engineering from Heriot-Watt University covers materials, structures, geotechnics, water engineering, and transportation engineering, and will provide you with the key skills and knowledge required to become a professional civil engineer working in industry.  

You’ll concentrate on analysis and behaviours of materials in the early years of the degree, with a focus on design and management as you progress through your studies.  

Your personal development within a professional environment will be supported and developed throughout your studies to ensure you gain the core technical skills and personal qualities required to strive within the dynamic built environment industry at the highest possible technical level. 

Your learning environment  

Our MEng Civil Engineering is taught though a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, laboratory practicals, projects, and field trips allowing you to get to know and build relationships with your teaching staff, academics, industry professionals, and peers. Your learning will be assessed through a combination of coursework and examination.  

During your studies, you’ll benefit from and have access to our specialist equipment, computing software, and laboratories, including a light structures lab with equipment to test steel reinforcing bars, immersive virtual reality software, a wave basin which can simulate any sea condition, a geotechnics lab with a range of soil testing equipment, a hydraulics lab with three tilting flumes and state of the art measurement capabilities, a building services lab containing fully-instrumented laboratory test rigs for drainage, and an extensive structures lab with a rail track test centre and a fatigue testing facility.   

Gaining employability skills is at the heart of our programme and you’ll have lots of opportunity to gain practical experience. In year two you can participate in a week-long field course, “Constructionarium”, which provides hands-on construction working alongside professional engineers and tradesmen to construct scaled down versions of buildings, bridges, dams, and other engineering structures from all around the world.   

Customise your learning 

You’ll take eight mandatory courses in the first three years of your degree, and you can transfer to another programme within the discipline until the end of year three. 

Year one will introduce you to mechanics, construction and building services technologies, and mathematics for engineers and scientists. You’ll also take a course designed to inspire awareness of the contribution of your discipline to tackling global challenges, and its connection to other disciplines. You’ll work in teams, learn to cope with complexity, gain core study skills, and thrive on ambiguity.  

In year two, you’ll be introduced to hydraulics and hydrology, the analysis of determinate structures, materials, stress analysis and element strength, and surveying and geographical information systems software. You’ll also further develop your mathematics and statistics skills for engineers.  

Year three will see your knowledge of structures, elements, geotechnics, hydraulics and hydrology strengthen. You’ll also strengthen your design skills in transport design, infrastructure, and society, and learn about environmental technology and management.  

You can study at our Edinburgh campus in year four or can apply to participate in an exchange programme to one of our partner universities. The exchange programme allows you to spend your year four abroad at a partner university, returning to Edinburgh to complete year five.  

If you study at our Edinburgh campus, you’ll take five mandatory courses providing you with knowledge on geotechnical applications, and foundation engineering. You’ll also participate in a collaborative group exercise as part of a design project and complete your dissertation. You can customise your learning in year four by choosing three optional courses from a range of around ten specialist courses.  

In year five, you’ll complete a mandatory professional design project linked with and supported by local practitioners. This project will provide you with the opportunity to experience complex engineering design, enhance your fundamental technical design skills, and work on finding solutions in an interdisciplinary nature. You’ll choose five optional courses in year five based on your specific interests of civil engineering.  

If you studied at a partner institution in year four, then you’ll be supported in making appropriate course choices in year five.  

Year five also provides opportunities to participate in a field trip to Barcelona, to view the design of some of the world’s most iconic structures.

Throughout your studies, you’ll have the opportunity to transfer to our Dubai or Malaysia campuses for a year or semester through an inter-campus transfer.  

An exchange or inter-campus transfer is administered by Heriot-Watt’s Go Global programme and allows you to expand your horizons by taking your studies to worldwide destinations.  

Industry  

We work closely with industry to ensure our course content is up-to-date and reflects the current and emerging needs of industry and employers. You’ll gain the right blend of knowledge, practical skills, and soft skills to set you up for life after graduation. Strong industry mentoring is involved in the year four Design project.  

Accreditation

This degree is accredited by the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer (CEng).