SciTech School of Advanced Learners

Planning and designing a civil engineering project is a complex task which requires expert knowledge and strategic decision making skills. Engineering judgement plays a key role throughout the entire designing process. It is important to understand the level of responsibility the design engineers hold and the risks associated with executing these challenging engineering tasks. Proper investigations, analyses and planning works must be accomplished prior to initiating the construction phase. Most of the undergraduate courses in civil engineering has a design component where the students are required to present a holistic design to real world scenario. This series of articles discusses the process of designing a civil engineering project. All the major activities carried out in the 'planning and designing' stage are explained in a detailed manner.  The design process can be elaborated in ten steps; each step having one or more clear outcomes. In this article, the first thre...

Every undergraduate who follows a bachelor's degree has to do a research or a project in their final year of study. As it is the first time the students are experiencing a course module which requires the student discover new knowledge through a research, most of them finds it difficult to conduct the study properly in order to obtain the intended objectives. This series of articles on 'Undergraduate Research Project' will cover the basics of a research. There are several steps involved in a research which are common to all levels: B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D. and even post-doctoral studies. The following figure is an illustration of the flow of a research. Flow of a research Step 1 & 2: Selection of a topic & Understanding the background The very first step of a research is selecting a topic. Usually at the undergraduate level, research topics are given to the students by the institution. Every topic has a supervisor who will guide the student throughout t...