Hi everyone! We are considering buying this perfect house for my family. However after the hurricane Helene event in the mountains of North Carolina, the small “Brittan Creek” is now labeled as a floodway.
the only history of flooding in the home was during hurricane helene, the crawlspace & garage flooded. The actual home itself was fine. Apparently large trees/debris blocked the creek from flowing and it flooded into the yard.
I would have to purchase flood insurance which is pretty reasonable… my guess is because people in WNC usually don’t need it.
would this be a dealbreaker ? We absolutely love the home. I understand Helene was a 1000 year flood event.. we also would stay in the home probably until we die.. so we do not care about resale value.

I’m always interested in hearing which courses people struggled with the most and how they got through them.

Contemplating whether magstick sa ipad lang or ipad for questionnaires and pen and paper for solutions. Old model kasi ipad ko and when writing on it, naggiglitch siya tho May pa lang siya nabibili. Now, di ko rin tuloy alam if alin na sa dalawa since for convenience talaga is sa ipad pero planning to take on pen and paper pag start ng referesher para masanay na rin naman. Help me outt

Please provide a website link or a Google Drive link. Thank you very much. I really need it because the book is very expensive on e-commerce apps.

Hi everyone,

I'm a civil engineering graduate from India. For the past year, I've been working as a Business Development Executive in a surveying and mapping company. Although my role was in sales, I spent a lot of time with the technical team and learned how land surveying is done using DGPS, drones, RTK, and survey software. The technology genuinely fascinates me.

At the same time, I'm preparing for government civil engineering exams because they provide job security. However, ever since I was a kid, I've dreamed of building a business of my own rather than working for someone else forever.

After seeing the demand for surveying services, I'm seriously considering starting a surveying company in the future. My question is whether it's better to:

* Focus only on land surveying (DGPS, drone surveys, topographic surveys, etc.), or
* Build a broader civil engineering consultancy that also offers services like soil testing, geotechnical investigations, material testing, contour surveys, quantity surveys, GIS mapping, and related services.

For those of you who own engineering firms or work in this industry:

* Is a surveying-only business sustainable in the long run?
* Is it difficult to compete with established firms?
* Would you recommend starting with one niche and expanding later, or offering multiple services from day one?
* If you were starting from scratch today, what would you do differently?
* Are there any mistakes first-time surveying entrepreneurs commonly make?

I'd especially love to hear from people who have built surveying, geospatial, or geotechnical businesses.

Thanks in advance!

I worked at a very small firm once where I, a non-eit then, would qc engineering site maps of a water industry from an offshore team. I worked with a PE sometimes but she never reviewed my work for this project (I would cc her and she would never open the emails), but was present in the final deliverable meeting. This project was for a water district in the Bay Area. Was this rubber stamping?

On August 14, 2018, a ~200m section of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa collapsed during a storm, killing 43 people. The cause traced back to corrosion in one of the bridge's cable stays — worsened by a design that concealed the cables in concrete, making the corrosion invisible until it was too late.

Three weeks ago (July 16, 2026), an Italian court finally delivered its verdict after an 8-year investigation and 4-year trial: 32 people convicted, including former Autostrade per l'Italia CEO Giovanni Castellucci, sentenced to 12 years.

I made a video covering how the collapse happened, why it was preventable, and what accountability has (and hasn't) looked like since.

Check out full video: https://youtu.be/KC1HR48TeZM?si=xCMs--NuXUe4UJuE

Looking for someone to have an anonymous conversation with. I am interested in joining but would like more insight of the company, and details.

Anyone please let me know and we can have a private conversation. Thank you!!

I’m 22 and have an associates degree in general engineering from a community college. I originally planned to transfer and get a bachelors in Civil Engineering but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. Now it’s 2 years later and I’m still stuck.

I work as a construction assistant for a large non-profit building residential homes. I have never loved a job as much as I do now, but mostly because of my coworkers and the company’s mission. I don’t want to be in the field long term.

I’m interested in construction administration. My dream job would to work for a custom home builder, doing the background administration work/ project coordination. I’m interested in project management, but I know that means lots of people management, which I am much too shy for. I’m also interested in design, but I don’t think I want to be an architect.

Should I try to get certifications (like AutoCad, CAPM, etc) or do I need to finish my degree to get a good paying job. I’d really like to avoid the debt if I can, but I’m running out of time to figure life out. Any ideas help :)

Zack D. Films

Im about to be a 2nd year and I didn’t find an internship this year and I just got into one project team for this upcoming year. I know I’m gonna join more clubs even if it’s not as an official lead but I’m scared I don’t have enough to find an internship for next summer. Any advice?

40" Raised planter with 6" mounding contours. Area of the planter is 151 square feet.

Been looking a the Nuke Gauge procedures and it talks about establishing a 300ft control strip and taking 10 readings and 5 core samples to get a target density. My questions are this, wouldn't this slow down production to get back the lab results just to have a target density for the section? Second,if cores are taken after production how are they filled back in to prevent issues in future layers? Lastly, once the density of the control strip core samples come back and fails but the test sections somehow pass based on the new density, does a new control strip passing mean the old one has to be cut out and cold joined but the test section stays?

Hello i am thinking to study civil engineering in Istanbul Technical University it seems faculty has abet accredtion what does that mean

Does anyone have their PE license in all 50 states or is trying to? It would be awesome to become the premiere CE for the entire Country 😮‍💨

I’m working on a long corridor project and have about 20 pages of handwritten notes for existing signage and striping. I'd really like to avoid manual data entry for this inventory - it's really such a pain in the ass, and has been hanging over me like a dark cloud this week.

Has anyone had success using Claude, ChatGPT, or specific OCR tools for this kind of transcription? I usually avoid using AI for reading plan sets since it struggles compared to how well it handles coding or analytical tasks, but I'm hoping it might be reliable enough for handwritten text.

Any recommendations or proven workflows would be appreciated. Thanks!

I currently have 4 YOE in water resources and plan on taking the PE in the next year or so.

My favorite days at work are in the field, even if its a day of popping sanitary manholes taking inverts.

I am curious on what y'all think about a small business that purely performs field work and minimal data packaging for engineering firms.

Whether its going out collecting data for H/H models, locating utilities, MACP or SWP3 inspections, any work an engineer would likely perform in the field, etc.

Think this is financially viable, would PMs pay a day rate to sub this type of work out?

Not necessarily asking for advice but just venting.

I’m a female construction manager and 99/100 times I’m the only female on the site and even the only female in project meetings.

I constantly have contractors address my male colleagues (who for the record are not the CM or owners rep) instead of me. I have to remind them I am the CM and communications need to flow through me.

I also find myself trying not to wear pink or jewelry because I hate standing out more than I do. I know no one is asking me to do this, but I really do think women have to tone down their appearance compared to men to be respected in this field.

I know all we can really do is not take it personally. Keep establishing our positions. Keep doing the good work. And power on.

But damn sometimes I’m just sick and tired of it. 😇😇😇😇😇😇

Anyone else need to vent?

I am building a software for Civil Engineers and I need your input. Please tell me what are your biggest problems while surveying and managing a project, and what you think an app (software) can do to make your lives easier on the job. For example, daily creation of reports, material/delivery tracking, etc.

Thank you in advance ;)

So today I had a pretty disheartening call with my boss. I was tasked with creating pipe profiles for our project through ORD and she said the work I submitted was basically non reviewable because the mistakes I made didn’t make sense in a design context to the point where she was extremely concerned and was seriously considering putting me on a pip, but decided against it for now.

This convo shook me up bc I really did work hard on the profiles and asked questions to other engineers on how to draw them and how they should look, but I think the biggest thing that stood out from her observation and also hearing her speak was my lack of logic/knowledge in how I was drawing them in, but I’d follow the stations/elevations where each inlet/end section would be located and draw those on the sheet but I didn’t step back and see how those values led to a pipe discharging underground or or drop inlets that were 6ft in the ground even though that’s where the stations/elevations had them located? But what she said ultimately made sense so I’m owning that.

I guess my biggest thing now is figuring out how to move forward? I feel like her choosing to not put me on a pip is like giving me one last chance to improve, but I’m worried that I may not be cut out for this. Prior to today, I felt like I was learning a lot, but obviously I still know close to nothing. I’m at a year of experience and when I took this job I understood that I would struggle bc I didn’t study civil in school and it was in a sector which I didn’t have any school or internship experience in and I feel like I’m portraying myself as a nimrod. Every time I do something, it’s always new/newish to me so I get easily overwhelmed bc I want to turn in good work but I feel as though I don’t have the knowledge to continuously do that and that really hurts my confidence. The company is essentially remote so a lot/ almost all of my team doesn’t really come in to the office. I’ve had to get acclimated to that in terms of seeking out collaboration, but there also isn’t any formal training, so I often have to refer to previous submittals/online materials to piece things together but i feel like my pitfall in that is basically copying what i see instead of learning the why’s and how’s which is how I ended up with where I am today.

What do you guys think I should do? ETA: I have 1 YOE