Becoming a Highway Engineer

Highway engineering is a specialist discipline within the civil engineering profession. Highway engineers are dedicated to the design, building, and maintenance of individual roads and road networks.

The Job:

Highway engineers are employed by governments, municipal authorities, civil engineering contractors, and consultants. Their precise activities vary depending on their employer.

Responsibility for highways in each country is often divided between local government engineering departments, which are responsible for local roads, and state or national governments, which take strategic decisions about trunk roads and principal highways. Highway engineers are employed by both groups.

In this capacity, engineers take the highway projects that are generated by local, regional, or national planning bodies and transforms them into reality. To achieve this aim, they appoint consultants and contractors, negotiate and monitor their contracts, supervise the construction process, and ensure that the whole scheme is achieved on time and within budget to the required specification.

They work to minimize the inconvenience that is caused to the local community by major road development schemes through disrupted traffic and the constant presence of heavy vehicles and machinery. This is achieved by placing clear responsibilities on contractors and insisting that they adopt the types of working practice that will minimize disruption and inconvenience to the public.

Highway engineers are also responsible for the maintenance of existing roads, road signs, bollards, traffic lights, road lighting, and drainage. It is often also their responsibility to manage the clearance of ice and snow, debris, and broken-down vehicles from the highways. This is a job that involves liaison with a wide range of people, and the supervision of both contractors and consultants.

Highway engineers employed by consultants complete the detailed design of the highway. This is a much more office-based role, although some trips out of the office to visit sites will be necessary. Samples of soil or rock are taken to gain an understanding of the terrain that is the foundation for the road. The progress of the highway through cuttings and tunnels and the design of embankments and bridges are all part of their work. Consultants supervise the work of contractors on behalf of their clients by paying regular visits to construction sites.

Contractors have the responsibility for actually building the road, boring the tunnels, and constructing bridges and flyovers. Their highway engineers lay out the site, arrange for earth to be moved, materials to be brought in, and streams to be diverted. In this role, these engineers spend much more time on site attending to the work that is in progress.

While trainees are concerned with such matters as levels and drainage, senior engineers plan the schedule of events, manage the site, and monitor budgets.

Such projects often require existing roads to be diverted, work to be completed at night, and road cones, signals, and other safety precautions to be installed. These are all the responsibility of contractors.

Training Involved:

Highway engineers are professional engineers who have completed at least 4 years of training and gained relevant experience in addition to their academic qualifications.

Training includes time spent in the design office, designing highways, tunnels, and bridges and learning how to overcome difficulties such as quicksand or water. Experience is also gained in setting out the levels on a construction site and dealing with sub-contractors. Expert knowledge of construction techniques is also put into practice. All trainees must obtain a thorough understanding of the legal requirements of their profession.

Toward the end of their period of training, highway engineers will be given responsibility for seeing though specific projects from beginning to end, although they will be required to present their ideas to senior engineers for approval.

Useful Qualifications to Have:

Useful subjects include: mathematics and physics.

Salary Expectations:

The base salary range of a Highway Engineer ranges from $65,534 to $91,325 annually, while the median salary for most Highway Engineers is $74,672 annually. (US Base Pay)

Future Prospects:

Employment prospects for highway engineers are good. Every year, more cars and other road vehicles are produced than are taken off the roads, and so the need for more and wider roads capable of taking an increased flow of traffic increases.

There is always a need to build new highways and to maintain those that have taken a considerable traffic load. New and improved lighting systems, safety barriers, and road signs are constantly being introduced and highway engineers have responsibility for all of this work.

While those working for government authorities tend to work in well-defined geographical areas, engineers employed by consultants and contractors may be involved with projects in many different places, including countries other than their own. Highway engineering is the type of job in which people do not stay in the same place for long.

For further information, contact professional engineering bodies representing highway and civil engineers. Also contact government transport departments, municipal authorities, and trade organizations representing engineering consultants and contractors.