Letter from the chair:

It would be difficult to visualize modern society without the contributions of civil engineers.  For example, before the early twentieth century, all cities were population sinks, not sources, with at least one-third of urban dwellers dying from water borne illness. The lion’s share of the phenomenal 57% increase in American life expectancy in the 20th century from 49 to 77 years, came not from medicine, but from the public health improvements directly due to the provision of clean water and disposal of waste water made possible by civil engineering.

Civil Engineering is a diverse branch of engineering, including environmental, geotechnical, structural, transportation, and water resources engineering.  Civil engineering professionals are involved with the planning, analysis, design, construction, and management of bridges, buildings, dams, heavy industrial plants, airports, highways, railways, tunnels, embankments, sanitary disposal facilities, and many other facilities and systems. Environmental engineers employ physical, chemical, and biological processes to reduce pollutants in and provide clean resources from water, air, and ground.  The physical infrastructure of modern civilization is conceived and realized by civil and environmental engineers. 

Due to their scope and importance, much of this physical infrastructure is public. More than one quarter of civil engineering professionals are employed in the public sector and much of the civil engineering infrastructure is publicly owned or funded. Civil engineering is centrally concerned with public works and is directly associated with public policy and public financing.

The civil engineering profession recognizes this grave importance to society, as evidenced by the first Fundamental Canon of the Code of Ethics of the American Society of Civil Engineers:

“Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development^[1] in the performance of their professional duties.”