Industries we serve
Civil & Infrastructure
Buildings, transport, water and energy infrastructure, delivered by EPC contractors and consultancies where a drawing is a contract.
What this sector screens for
Reading a tender and a bill of quantities, the codes a design is actually checked against, and site coordination between disciplines that a degree project never has to resolve.
Roles we prepare for
- Design engineer
- Site engineer
- Planning engineer
- Quantity surveyor
- Project engineer
Disciplines that place here
- Civil
- Mechanical
- Electrical
At a glance
- 5
Entry roles
Titles this sector's track is written against.
- 3
Feeder disciplines
Degrees that place into this sector.
- 4
Track modules
Domain modules built for this sector alone.
- 5
Pipeline stages
Screen, Gap Identify, Develop, Certify, Place.
The hiring bar
What you are expected
to do unsupervised.
Not the job description. The four things a team quietly assumes a new graduate can already handle, and notices immediately when they cannot.
01
Read the contract, not only the drawing
Scope, exclusions and who carries which risk. On an infrastructure project the drawing tells you what to build and the contract tells you what it means.
02
Take off a quantity you would sign
A measurement someone will pay against. Being roughly right in a lecture and being defensible in a valuation are different skills.
03
Resolve a clash between disciplines
A duct through a beam, on site, with two foremen waiting. The technical answer is the easy half; getting it agreed is the job.
04
Record progress the way a claim needs it
Daily progress, RFIs, measurement sheets and photographs. Months later this record is the only version of events that exists.
Syllabus versus shortlist
Two different
reading lists.
The degree is not wrong. It is answering a different question from the one you will be asked across the table.
- What the degree gives you: A structure analysed for a single load case.
- What the shortlist asks for: A structure checked against a code, a client specification and a contractor's programme at the same time.
- What the degree gives you: A design drawn to be correct.
- What the shortlist asks for: A design drawn to be built, priced and inspected by three different people.
- What the degree gives you: Software output taken as the answer.
- What the shortlist asks for: Software output you sanity-check by hand before it leaves the office with your initials on it.
- What the degree gives you: A project with one author.
- What the shortlist asks for: A project where four disciplines and two contractors share the same grid line.
The domain track
Written against
this sector only.
Four modules, specified by practising engineers in this sector and re-reviewed on a fixed cycle. Your gap report decides the order you meet them in.
01
Codes and design checks
Load combinations, detailing rules and the code clauses a design is actually reviewed against — including how to find the clause you need.
02
Drawings, models and coordination
General arrangement to detail, reinforcement and services drawings, and how a coordinated model becomes a buildable sequence.
03
Quantities, tenders and rates
Bill of quantities, take-off, rate analysis and reading a tender document for what it obliges rather than for what it describes.
04
Planning and site delivery
Programme logic, look-ahead planning, requests for information, and the quality records a handover is assembled from.
The language of the room
Words you are assumed
to already have.
An interviewer will not define these before using them. The track puts you inside the vocabulary rather than handing you a glossary to memorise.
Design and codes
- IS codes
- Load combinations
- Detailing
- Reinforcement schedule
- Design basis report
Commercial
- Bill of quantities
- Take-off
- Rate analysis
- Variation order
- Retention
- Valuation
Site and delivery
- RFI
- Method statement
- Look-ahead programme
- Snag list
- As-built
- Handover dossier
Where these roles sit
Same sector,
four different rooms.
The bar is the sector's, but what each kind of employer leans on hardest is not the same. Knowing which one you are sitting in front of is half the preparation.
EPC contractors
Delivering the asset against a programme and a price. Hires the widest, and expects a graduate on site within weeks.
Design consultancies
Producing the design somebody else builds. Screens hardest on code literacy and on whether you check your own output.
Project management consultancies
Sitting for the client between designer and contractor. The role is coordination and record-keeping before it is engineering.
Authorities and asset owners
Metros, ports, water utilities and power networks, who review what everybody else produces and hold the long-term standard.
Sector questions
Asked before
anyone applies.
What the sector expects
Is site work unavoidable at the start?
For most contractor roles, yes, and it is the fastest way to become useful. Design and planning routes exist from day one, but a candidate who refuses site outright narrows the shortlist sharply.
Do I need to know a specific analysis package?
Being fluent in one helps; being unable to check its output by hand does not. Interviewers routinely ask for an order-of-magnitude answer without the software, and that question is doing real work.
Are mechanical and electrical graduates hired here?
Yes — building services, plant rooms, power distribution and commissioning are all civil-and-infrastructure delivery. The coordination and commercial modules are shared; the design modules are discipline-specific.
How the track runs
Do I actually produce a take-off and a rate analysis?
Yes, from a real drawing set, and it is marked the way a quantity surveyor would mark it — on what you missed and what you could not justify.
Does the track cover BIM?
As coordination rather than as software training. What matters at entry level is understanding what a federated model is for and how a clash gets closed out, which is a process question first.
I want planning rather than design.
Say so at the Screen stage. Planning sequences deeper into programme logic, progress measurement and look-ahead discipline, and lighter on detailed design checks.
Civil & Infrastructure
Get the gap report
for this sector.
The Screen stage measures you against what this sector actually specifies, not against a generic benchmark.