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Civil Engineering Group

Civil Engineering Department

The Civil Engineering Department at Qom University of Technology was established in 2009 by admitting students in the full-time and part-time bachelor's programs. Currently, about 200 students are enrolled in this field.

Importance and Necessity:

Civil engineering is one of the disciplines that demonstrates the application of science in creating development and progress in the country. Anything related to the prosperity of a nation—such as dams, airports, roads, towers, tunnels, communication masts, earthquake-, flood-, and fire-resistant buildings, power plants, and affordable, lightweight, quality construction materials—falls within the scope of civil engineering. Civil engineering encompasses a very wide range of activities. The goal of this discipline is to train specialists who can take responsibility for design, calculation, execution, and supervision in various civil projects, including building construction, road building, bridge construction, hydraulic structures, sewage collection and disposal, and more.

The significant advances we witness today have been achieved through the safety and stability created by civil engineering. Controlling the forces of nature such as floods, earthquakes, and severe storms are gifts that civil engineering has given to modern society. On the other hand, vital communication routes, massive dams generating electricity, tunnels cutting through mountains, and more—these all evidence the importance of this engineering discipline.

Civil Engineering Field:

Civil engineering is an academic degree awarded after university studies, but it is not considered a job in itself. Due to the broad scope of activities available to graduates of this discipline, the jobs a civil engineer can pursue are classified in various ways. A civil engineer may work in contracting, consulting, supervision, or more specifically, in sectors like building construction, dam construction, road construction, refineries, industrial structures, construction management, marine structures, and others.

In Iran, civil engineering is taught at associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels, and students have the option to earn a degree at any of these stages. As academic level increases, due to the extensive subdivisions, the field of work becomes narrower and more specialized. For instance, at the bachelor's level, a student broadly studies all subdivisions to some extent, but in higher degrees, the focus narrows to one specific area.

As mentioned, graduates of this field can take on various responsibilities after graduation, such as design, calculation, execution, and supervision of diverse civil projects. Some examples include:

  • Calculating, constructing, executing, and to some extent designing various residential, administrative, and industrial buildings—brick, concrete, and steel—including villas, multi-story apartments, high-rise towers, as well as governmental offices, schools, hospitals, factories and industrial centers, sports facilities, assembly halls, and more.
  • Designing, calculating, and executing different roads and highways inside and outside cities and villages, including gravel roads, asphalt roads, highways, and railways (covering routing, laying out paths, subgrade, and pavement).
  • Constructing, executing, and in some cases designing and calculating various concrete and metal bridges with different spans, dimensions, and shapes such as inner-city bridges, overpasses, intercity, and highway bridges.
  • Building various earth-fill and concrete dams, as well as diversion dams and related facilities like tunnels or diversion canals (for onsite operations during dam construction), water intake facilities from dams, and water level control behind dams.
  • Carrying out river management and regulation works.
  • Designing, calculating, and building water transmission lines including various pressurized pipes or open channel systems for transferring water from dams and lakes for agricultural, drinking, and industrial uses to needed regions, and from water treatment plants to storage reservoirs and consumption areas.
  • Constructing water and wastewater treatment plants including buildings, related facilities, landscaping, and more.
  • Designing, calculating, and building water supply networks for urban and rural areas to provide drinking water to consumers, including related facilities such as storage tanks, piping, branches, and others.
  • Designing, calculating, and constructing stormwater collection and disposal systems arising from rainfall in streets and other urban areas, as well as sewage collection and disposal networks for household and industrial wastewater, transferring it outside the city to treatment plants.
  • Conducting many surveying tasks essential for different construction works like road and dam construction, as well as for accurate map layout and some aspects of architectural and design drawing.

Job Opportunities and Workplaces

Various organizations directly or indirectly engage in civil activities and recruit graduates of this field according to their specific activities. The Ministries of Housing and Urban Development, Roads and Transportation, and Energy are major employers, while other ministries, offices, organizations, and governmental and private centers such as the Ministries of Education, Agriculture, Science, Research and Technology, Banks, and others indirectly require civil engineers for tasks like design, calculation, execution, and supervision. Additionally, many consulting engineering firms widely perform design, calculation, and supervision of construction projects, and numerous governmental and private construction and road companies hire graduates. Establishing consulting and contracting companies, obtaining necessary licenses from relevant agencies, recruiting skilled engineers, and operating in this manner constitute other components of career paths in this field.

Further Studies

Postgraduate studies, known as advanced education, include master's and doctoral degrees. In a non-continuous master's program, students complete about 32 specialized academic units, some of which consist of a thesis or dissertation. This allows them to expand their knowledge in a particular area beyond the bachelor's level.

Various Master's and PhD Specializations in Civil Engineering

Civil engineering bachelor's graduates can continue their studies at the master's level with specializations including Structural Engineering, Hydraulic Structures, Earthquake Engineering, Transportation Engineering, Soil Mechanics and Foundations, Water Engineering, Marine Structures, Construction Management, Transportation Planning Engineering, Surveying Engineering (Geodesy), Photogrammetry, and Environmental Engineering. Each of these fields includes more specialized branches, particularly studied at the doctoral level, especially during dissertation work. It is possible to continue education in all these specializations for both master's and PhD within the country.