Transportation versus Strutural Engineering...

[new_injuneer]

I submitted a thread a while ago about wanting to pursue a 2nd bachelors degree in Civil Engineering. It is still on the bottom of the page somewhere (not too busy of a forum apparently).

Anyway, I'm the program and doing well. My interests rank as listed before: Land Development -> Transportation -> Structural

However, it is not a strong hierarchy. I would just prefer not to do environmental. Anyway, my school has a concentration option and Land Development is not one (jobs there seem scarce anyway), so I have to pick Transportation versus Structural.

I've been doing some searches of jobs for CEs and just found that there are about 5 times as many listings for Structural Engineers as Transportation Engineers. Is this accurate? Is it much harder to get a job as a Transportation Engineer? All things being equal, I'd probably rather do Transportation, but if jobs will be much easier to find in Structural, I'll try and go that route.

Any opinions?

 

[TexasRedDirt]

If you want to get into land development you should just get a general civil degree. Also, in structures you really need to get a Master's degree. It's not mandatory, but highly preferred.

 

[bradlelf]

I have a BSCE with a concentration in Transportation/Traffic engineering and have been doing Land Development work for the last 8+ years. If my university would have had an H&H concentration I would have taken that but between my choices of environmental, geotech, structural, transportation and CM ... I chose transportation.

You can get into land development with any civil engineering concentration. I think that my traffic engineering knowledge allows me to effectively communicate with our traffic consultants much easier than many other LD people. Additionally, my experience working on heavy highway and other transportation projects gives me a better understanding of low volume road design.

That being said, you could have a structural concentration and still do land development work. If fact one of my EITs now is going to take the structural PE in the fall, he enjoys retaining wall and concrete slab design ... which is something I typically sub out, so that will be nice.

--------------------

Land Development Engineers have two general paths ... the office guys who just grind out the production and guys who manage teams, make presentations and do marketing. Luckily, I am one of the hybrids who do both. If you can learn the technical background and are also personable and well spoken ... the sky is the limit.

Traffic Engineers - There is a lot of public presentations in this field, so you better enjoying speaking in front of a crowd and giving opinion when put on the spot.

Structural Engineers are there own creatures ... they mysteriously jump in and out of projects and magically appear when you need them, only to retreat into their hidden caves when their part is done.