I like to think of myself as a specialist, but the enormous range of sub-fields into which I find myself delving in the course of what is essentially civil engineering work sometimes makes me feel like a sort of generalist. My jobs have covered dams, tunnels, roads, bridges, power stations, transmission lines, sewers, water treatment and desalination plants, canals and river-training, airports, harbours, mines, and offshore structures, not to mention a variety of buildings of different types, ranging from mud huts for displaced African tribespeople to monumental office blocks. Most of these fields can be broken down into different types of structure, each with different requirements. Tunnels can be road tunnels, rail tunnels, or water tunnels. For while basic construction terms may be the same from one project to the next, there will inevitably be reference to purpose-specific requirements demanding their own specialized terminology when dealing with hotels or hospitals, shopping malls or factories.
Roads can be concrete or bituminous, or even unsealed.
They can range from temporary haulage roads to major motorways. Power stations can be nuclear, fossil-fuelled, or hydro, and in the latter case can be housed in buildings on the surface or in caverns deep underground. The differing risks, constraints, and safety requirements for each structure make design considerations very different. Dams can be arch, gravity, or embankment dams. But the techniques concerned can differ radically.