Geotechnical Engineering: The Profession and Job Outlook
Posted January 26th, 2012
Geotechnical engineering is one of the specializations within civil engineering that involves investigating and understanding what lies beneath the ground’s surface.
Geotechnical Engineering 101 – What’s it all about?
Geotechnical engineers design and build foundations, excavations and slopes. One very important concern of geotechnical engineers is the safety of soil and the ability of the land to support the underlying structures.
The work of a geotechnical engineer includes five key activities: desk study or research into existing information, ground investigation (gathering new data), interpretation (understanding new data), analysis and design, and finally construction (or remediation).
Job prospects are excellent because every construction project involves foundation work. With development land at a premium, many projects involve the challenge of building on difficult ground such as swamps, or hills. In these areas, specialists like geotechnical engineers and consultants are needed.
A Career In Geotechnical Engineering – What Would I Do?
Because all construction takes place in or on the ground, geotechnical engineering plays a crucial role in all civil engineering projects. The need to investigate the ground is of vital importance before any construction work takes place. The failure to carry out adequate site investigations often has had dramatic and expensive consequences on construction projects.
In a geotechnical consulting firm, everyone works as a team to complete a project. A team usually comprises a project director who oversees the whole project; a senior engineer, assisted by one or more engineers and geologists; a checker or checkers to make sure everything is done correctly; followed by an internal and an external reviewer.
In such a firm, engineers learn to apply most of what they’ve learned theoretically at college. They’ll learn the critical issues involving analysis and design work, think innovatively about options and alternative designs and also address safety and environmental issues in their design.
How about Salary?
The median salary for geotechnical and other civil engineers was $77,560 per year in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the average salary earned by those working in this field was higher. The Bureau indicates that the average salary for geotechnical engineers was $82,280.
Job Outlook
Those in the geotechnical and civil engineering field can expect good job prospects through 2018, according to BLS projections. The Bureau indicates that it expects jobs to grow by 24 percent by that time, over and above its reported total for 2008. This makes the civil engineering field the fastest growing of the engineering subfields. This growth will be largely the result of increased emphasis on and need for improved and new infrastructure throughout the country.
