States, cities and districts around the world conduct daily public works activities to allow urban complexes to function efficiently. It is the responsibility of public officials to properly maintain the streets, promote traffic safety, provide storm drains, prevent flooding, provide potable water, transport liquid waste to treatment facilities, transport and store hazardous waste, collect and dispose of solid wastes, design and install traffic-control facilities, and perform a multitude of other tasks. These concerns require information, management, planning, communication, legal aspects, purchasing, finance, personnel and interpersonal relations. The role of the research engineer is achieved after many years of study. Students wishing to pursue this field should take courses that emphasize advanced mathematics and statistics.
Students can start early as a student assistant for a professor in the undergraduate major.
Most of the skills necessary to work in the field, however, will come with research completed in graduate studies. Most colleges and universities do not offer a research sub-discipline in the Civil Engineering major. Students should choose courses which they wish to specialize in. These structures can be as varied as buildings, bridges, pipelines, machinery, automobiles and spacecraft. The job of the structural engineer is to create these new designs or to evaluate and improve the load resistance capabilities of existing structures which may have been damaged during an earthquake.