Civil Engineering
The Marvels Of Civil Engineering
Civil engineering involves the strategic planning and designing of public or commercial roads, buildings, bridges, dams and more. It is a highly specialised field that requires professionals of civil engineering to study for an engineering degree for at least four years.
Civil engineering plays an intricate role in our lives as we make use of roads and bridges every single day to get from A to B. We live, work and entertain in buildings which at some point or another were the brainchild of a civil engineer.
The last two centuries have brought with it a number of marvels in civil engineering, for example the channel tunnel in France, the Empire State Building in the USA, and the Delta Works in the Netherlands. The latter is structure that was designed and built in 1986 with the purpose of breaking the waves of the ocean in order to protect the large area of land around the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta from the sea. This enormous structure consists of various dams, dikes, levees, locks, sluices and storm surge barriers.
South Africa also has its fair share of civil engineering marvels, including the Woodhead Dam which was built in the late 19th century by Thomas Stewart. At the time rapidly growing city of Cape Town was experiencing a shortage of water resources, so the dam was built on top of Table Mountain. It took nearly three years to build and the builders and supplies had to be carried to the top of the mountain with a cable car made specifically for this purpose, before the construction was finished in 1897. In 2008 the Woodhead Dam was officially recognised by the American Society of Civil Engineers as an International Historic Civil Engineering landmark.
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