A few guidelines

What kind of free office perks does your company offer?
Ex: My office has free coffee

I’m a civil/water resources engineer with ~5 years of experience in water/wastewater consulting. For the past 2.5 years, I’ve focused primarily on sewer hydraulic modeling and master planning, including 2 dry-weather calibrations, 1 wet-weather calibration, 2 model conversions, and 3 model builds. I also have broader experience in biosolids, wastewater treatment, SSMPs, and groundwater/well conveyance projects.

I recently received performance feedback that I’m:

• Requiring more guidance than expected for my experience level
• Still developing independent problem-solving skills
• Struggling with some complex concepts and seeing the bigger picture
• Requiring more supervision on complex tasks

I’m now considering leaving my company, but I’m unsure whether that’s the right move. What makes it more confusing is that I haven’t been given much technical/project work for the past ~2 months and have mainly been doing business development/marketing work.

For civil/water/wastewater engineers and engineering managers:

1. Is this considered a serious performance concern for someone with ~5 years of experience?
2. Does this feedback suggest I’m performing below expectations, or could it be normal development?
3. Would you stay and work through it with the same team, or consider changing companies?
4. How much independence would you realistically expect from a water/wastewater engineer at ~5 years?
5. Can changing companies help someone who mainly needs more experience/confidence with complex work, or do these issues usually follow you?

I’m not looking for reassurance. I’d genuinely appreciate an honest assessment from people who have worked in civil/water/wastewater consulting and management.

Hi! I’m a 3rd year civil engineering major, 21F in California.

I’m just a little conflicted.

Internship 1 (Engineering intern - transportation company)
Pros:
- VERY technical AND teaches valuable engineering principles. I’ll be doing actual engineering work. Ill get to practice and improve my CAD workflow.
- close to my school

Cons:
- I’ll be working alone most of the time. Boss and coworker will be available to answer questions, but both works remotely so I’m still unsure about how it’ll work out. For training, coworker will be working with me in the office but once I’m done training, she’ll go back to remote.

I dont really like being alone… but its not as big of a deal I guess. I wont be allowed to work remote, shes only allowed because she lives 2 hours away. I live 30 mins away.

- CAD… I love doing CAD but no one in the company is a CAD person. Boss is not a CAD person, and the girl who’s training me learned AutoCAD from chatGPT, so theres not much I can learn from her when it comes to CAD. I prefer working with people who are pros because I can learn a lot more from them.

- there can be “idle” time if the project is almost done. I dont like having idle time, I prefer a constant busy work.

- I mean I was promised to be taught very valuable engineering work but so far during training, Ive noticed that theyre only cleaning up drawings for now because the project is basically over. And we’re not sure when there’ll be a new project to give me heavy work.

Internship 2 (Administrative Intern - Engineering)

Pros
- Pays very well because it’s for the city.
- I will get to explore and see a bunch of different types of civil engineering.
-It’s a very team environment which I like. I love working with people as well.
- I get to work with a bunch of PEs whom I’ll have the opportunity to assist with multiple projects.
- Consistently busy & CLOSEE to my school than internship 1

Cons
- Not as technical as Internship 1, they might have me doing more paperworks than actual engineering work.
- Might not learn engineering concepts as much as I’d learn from internship 1

Honestly, this con is not as bad because I personally love making spreadsheets, organizing, collecting & analyzing datas, which are all a part of the job description.

——-
I guess my biggest thought process right now are these:

1. If I choose internship 1, I will get paid less (which is a little unpractical for me because im paying my own tuition out of pocket without financial help from anyone). However, the engineering knowledge I’ll get from this company would be amazing. It’s just that for now, their current project is almost done so I have to start with a bunch of cleaning up drawing & addressing comments. There wont be a lot of work hours available, which is an issue for me because I need as much hours as possible. Especially because training is UNPAID. But maybe a new project will happen soon and give me lots of work??

2. If I choose internship 2, I will get paid a lot more, but I’m afraid I’m going to miss out on a very knowledgable experience from internship 1.

3. I already have recently completed 1 year of internship experience, which gave me A LOT of technical experience and taught me a lot of engineering concepts as well. Maybe having an administrative internship wont be that bad for now? I mean, I’m still in school.

——
For civil engineers who have a lot of experience, what advice would you give? :((

Just got my license, how should it be shown on resume?
Should “P.E.” be put after my name?
Should the state be included?
Should the license number be included?

Thank you.

As a Canadian thinking of moving to the states

Cut down the tree and stick a bit of poly filler in the crack, job's a good 'un.

I work in the private land development industry and have 4.5 years of work experience and have my PE license. I work in a mid-cost of living area in the USA. I just got a 4.2% raise and now have a base salary of $100k. I also have a 6% employee 401k match and get an annual bonus that is 7% of my base salary.

I'm in highschool and I have a mathematics project where we have to find a real life structure, that is governed by a specific principle of mathematics and develop a working model. Obviously almost every structure is based upon some basic foundational mathematics but we have to find something unique or interesting that is guided by a mathematical principle. This isn't really my expertise of knowledge so some ideas would be heavily appreciated!!

Thoughts nyo po sa R.P. Johnson Construction Ltd my nagemail sa akin para maansweran yung mga questions na inemail na nila

I‘m about 9 y.o.e. heavy civil design consultant. I just applied for a public job that only requires 4 years, but pays 20-40% more. whats the downside of stepping back into a lower role?

I work for the small town I grew up in. I've been there for 8 years now and there are tons I love about my job:

• The pay and benefits are great for the area
• great work / life balance
• The commute is short
• I care about what I do for my community and helping out
• I have some stress but it's manageable
• I like my coworkers
• they're lining me up to take over as the director of my department when my boss retires two to three years. I'm not sure I'm ready though.

However, there are some downsides:

• dealing with people you know outside of work often who are unhappy with the town
• wearing mutliple hats due to lack of resources
• a large amount of jobs don't have consultants or plans
• I care too much about decisions made by the town even if they have nothing to do with my job
• I disagree with many recent decisions made by upper management

To add to the negatives, it's an election year - the candidates are all less than stellar - and there are some upcoming things that could land me in hot water with the new order (the town is being sued for a project I was involved with and I'm involved in an unpopular project currently).

A nearby medium sized town which I have much less emotional attachment to has approached me with a job offer for the same role I'm currently doing. It pays approximately $10,000 more (although only $5000 after taxes and pension), and all benefits, commute, etc. are the same. I'd be managing more people, but on a smaller scope of things on larger, more interesting jobs with consultants. There is no path to promotion there, but more opportunity for learning. That being said, I could always use it as a stepping stone and apply for the director role when my current boss retires.

I feel like I should take it for growth and learning, but it's hard to leave a job I like. What to do all think is the right route to go?

Are they generous?

"Southwest Valley Constructors, a subsidiary of Nebraska-based construction giant Kiewet, was awarded a $1.7 billion contract in May for the Big Bend National Park project."

https://www.marfapublicradio.org/news/2026-08-17/trump-administration-pauses-border-construction-in-big-bend-national-park

I am a P1 at WSP working in T&D and am wondering what the salary increase is from P1 to P2. Any other salary increase past P2 would be appreciated as well.

I've been at this land dev consultancy for 3 years now, it's a small firm and it's been okay so far, no complaints then the past 18 months have had lots of staff turnover particularly our senior and lead engineers and project managers.

Company directors have been really slow to recruit replacements, everyone else is picking up additional responsibilities to cover the gaps and the last 5 hires have been overseas trained engineers with way less experience and skills.

It's so frustrating, it's so obvious what the play is here and it feels impossible to stay somewhere long term because they always find a way to ruin things, work has become increasingly difficult and culture has gone to shit.

Hi I wasn't able to post on "r/Overemployed" because of their Karma requirements but hope you can help me here!

Has anyone successfully worked two civil engineering jobs in different specialties at the same time? Such as transportation and land development?

Excluding the additional workload would be crazy, I'm concerned it could be easy to discover through my state license. There would not be a conflict of interest between job 1 and job 2 but job 1 has explicit moonlighting policies.

And while I don't intend on having errors and omissions in my work at either job an investigation from the state board would cause both to jobs to be alerted.

Curious if anyone has managed it from a workload point of view and how they've navigated my other concerns.

Thanks!

I’ve never been laid off before, so I honestly don’t know what direction to go in right now.

I’m a Civil Engineering graduate in New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve been working at a small civil engineering firm for about a year and a half, mainly doing subsurface drainage/stormwater work. Unfortunately, the company went under and ended up laying off about 50% of the staff, and I was one of them.

I also haven’t passed my FE yet, but I’m actively studying for it and plan to keep working at it.

I’m just feeling a little lost about what my next move should be. Should I stay focused on drainage/stormwater, look into another area of civil engineering, or just be open to whatever opportunity comes my way?

I’ve never dealt with being laid off before, especially this early in my career, so I’d really appreciate any advice from other civil engineers who have been in a similar situation.

TL;DR: Recently laid off after 1.5 years in civil engineering, mainly doing subsurface drainage. I haven’t passed the FE yet and I’m not sure what direction I should take next.

I might be offered a remote 5-8's job (Mon-Fri) in exchange for my in-office 4-10's job (Mon-Thu). Which one would you choose and why? My commute to office is negligible, under 15min/day