Some Advice regarding Site work for Civil Engineer
For a Civil Engineer it is highly recommended to have site exposure atleast for 2 years. At office whether you are in designing, planning/project management, contracts, quantity surveying or in any other department you have to keep deep knowledge how the works get executed in real at site, how much time it takes, how to make optimum utilization of all resources. Suppose if you are a designer and after designing you do not have any idea how your design will be executed at site or what are the associated ancillary works or how it will look like after execution, then your design cannot be practical.
Similarly, if you are in Planning/Project Management and you do not have practical experience then you cannot plan/monitor/manage your project.
So, based on my experience I would like to say that before jumping to office work one must spend few years at site.
1) Read the drawing carefully and notice the details and shape of bars especially at junctions (column-footing, beam-column) in the case of in-situ construction and notice the details of connections in case of Steel Construction.
2) Read the levels carefully.
3) From drawings notice the position of reinforcing bars, like for placing bars in slab usually at bottom main reinforcement is placed as 1st layer and then above it distribution reinforcement is placed as second layer.
4) Check whether all the reinforced bars are placed at adequate cover as specified in drawing. If not then adjust them to the adequate cover.
5) Do read codes like SP34, IS 456, IS 800 to get clear idea about principles of the practices followed during construction.
6) Quality checks and standards should be strictly adhered to, you need to see only those materials are used in construction which pass the specified standards and quality checks. Also maintain high standards in terms of workmanship.
6) Maintain disciplined time-schedule for different tasks and adher to it, maintain a good work ethic.
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