<p>which field is the better career choice for the future, structural or construction management? I keep flip flopping between the two.. any info is helpfull.. (cost of education, difficulty, a day in the life, employability, salary, job security, general job satisfaction, stress, hours, and/or anything else you think would be helpful)</p>
<p>thanks in advance</p>
<p>OMG you sound EXACTLY like me! I have done sooooo much research on the two fields, spoken to just about anyone who was willing to answer my many questions and it seems like I flip flop from one to the other every single day! I have come to the conclusion that I need to pick something that will allow me to do both. The last thing I want to do 20 years from now is regret a decision I made regarding my education. I figure if I go the civil route and don't like the job, I can always switch to CM. However, if I don't like CM, I can't really go into design, and would probably have to get another degree in order to get into something else. You should also know that if you plan on going the Structural route you will likely need to get your masters degree in order to get an interesting job. It's not required, but it is becoming the standard more and more. With CM you can hop right into the job field. I know you're thinking of transferring to OSU, so if you don't mind all the extra math classes, I would go with the civil. CEM and Civil are very similar here. The only difference is about 3 extra math classes, dynamics, electrical fundamentals, and Physics 213. Oh, and Chem II. CEM majors stop at Calc II, Physics II, take statics and strengths, and only have to take Chem I. Only you know your strengths and weaknesses. I'd say give the civil route a shot, and if you don't like all the extra math, it's easy to switch over to CEM without any problems. Also, try getting an internship in the CM field. I got one last year without ANY experience and I hadn't even taken the lower level engineering courses. It'll give you an idea of what they actually do. Also, search around on the internet. There are tons of articles on what the two professions entail. Everything you asked in your question above can be found online someplace. You just have to be creative with your keywords and search through the results to find what you're looking for. Princetonreview.com is a good place to start, but only gives a general overview. Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Are you talking about choosing a field for your education or for your career? They're not necessarily the same.</p>
<p>If you're talking about your education, then I strongly recommend choosing civil engineering over construction management. Majoring in civil engineering will allow you to pursue a career in civil engineering or construction managment. Majoring in construction management will most likely prevent you from getting a position with an engineering firm. Taking a look at OSU's program, it's actually construction engineering management, which is better than plain construction management. I still recommend CE over CEM for undergrad though.</p>
<p>Majoring in engineering will give you a better understanding of what you're building. A typical CM program won't teach you why and how some things are things designed the way they are. I find this to be particularly helpful.</p>
<p>Majoring in CM will give you more insight into the business side of the field, which is helpful, but I don't think it's something you can't learn or pick up on your own. A CEM program would probably teach you about temporary structures in addition to what they teach you in a CM program.</p>
<p>If your question is about choosing a career, then that's a bit more difficult to answer. The best way to find out the answer is to try out each through internships.</p>
<p>As for your factors...</p>
<p>Cost of education - As buildinglover_33 said, for companies that take on more complex structural engineering projects, a master's degree is pretty much a prerequisite. Getting one without a thesis will take about one year at many schools. You don't really get any financial aid though, unless you do a thesis and work it off as an RA/TA. In construction, a bachelor's is the norm.</p>
<p>Difficulty - For structural engineering, the difficulty lies within the design and calculations, i.e. the technical stuff. For construction management, the difficulty lies with managing contractors and dealing with clients. They're both difficult, but in different aspects.</p>
<p>Employability - Construction depends on the economy. There's billions upon billions of dollars of work out there engineered and ready to go, but they're at a standstill because they can't get funding. I don't know enough to speak about structural engineering. Perhaps aibarr can shine some light on that. </p>
<p>Salary - As far as I know, construction management pays more than structural engineering, but of course I'm sure the reverse is true for some people as well. I saw a salary survey summary from CMAA saying the average construction manager salary is $117,000 (<a href="http://www.cmaanet.org/user_images/compensation_survey.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.cmaanet.org/user_images/compensation_survey.pdf</a>). The median structural engineering salary is $83,000 (GoStructural.com</a> - Facts and figures to guide your career decisions: The 8th Annual Compensation Survey). Before the market went bust, I heard that it was common for high level CM's to leave the field to work on the owner's side for an even higher pay.</p>
<p>Job security - My regional office just laid off a few dozen people last week (out of 700). Construction can be a volatile industry.</p>
<p>General job satisfaction - I imagine it's pretty similar among both fields. It's a great fe eling to know you built a building or structure. You feel accomplished at the end of the day when you go home. </p>
<p>Stress - CM is stressful. No ifs ands or buts about it. Everything was supposed to be done yesterday. You're never really ahead of the schedule; somehow you're always behind because the owner will keep pushing you. There's a lot of money involved in construction; some projects can cost billions of dollars. With so much on the line, the clients will always question you and secondguess you. People get frustrated, people lose their tempers and start yelling. </p>
<p>Construction is a dangerous profession. 21% of workplace fatalities in 2007 were in construction. People do stupid things, so you always have to be on the lookout for your own safety as well as the safety of others. People depend on you to get home safely at the end of the day. I've heard of people who were involved in near misses who just couldn't go back to work, not because of a physical injury, but because they couldn't mentally set foot back on the site. It can really mess you up.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I think it's worth it though. The feeling of knowing you put that building up is like no other feeling in the world. Pretty much everybody in the construction industry will tell you that, from the laborers to the CEO's.</p>
<p>Hours - You get on site before your trades start and you leave after they're done. Typically 8-10 hours a day. </p>
<p>Day in the Life... </p>
<p>I get to work at about 6:30am and start getting ready for the day, which may involve getting my drawings ready and/or coordinating with other superintendents. The trades usually start at 7am.</p>
<p>I'm out on site, talking to the foreman, coordinating the day's activities. I work primarily with steel, so I keep track of which pieces are getting erected, and make sure everything is done according to the drawings and specifications. Sometimes a logisitcal problem comes up and I have to coordinate with other subcontractors. Sometimes there's an unexpected field condition, in which case I'd have to get in touch with the architect to get an answer on how to proceed. </p>
<p>There are a lot of meetings... too many meetings. They can be about pretty much anything, including safety, logistics, coordination, progress, payments, etc. Some meetings involve the tradesmen, some involve the client, architects, engineers, etc. There's pretty much a meeting for everything that you can think of.</p>
<p>Lunch is 30 minutes at noon. The trades are done by 3:30 usually unless they do overtime, in which case it's usually an additional 2 hours. At the end of the day, I do my paperwork and reports in my office, which is a conex box (think shipping container fitted out with lights, HVAC, and windows). </p>
<p>That's about as general of a description that I can make it, but really every day is pretty different, so things are always interesting. It's tough to get bored.</p>
<p>Note that my experiences are from a construction superintendent's point of view. A project manager would involve more paperwork and less field work. </p>
<p>Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.</p>
<p>ken, </p>
<p>in the masters program, what exactly is the difference between the thesis and non-thesis programs as far as employment and stuff?</p>
<p>I can tell you that my brother was in CM. He landed a job with the highest starting salary out of anyone I know. I know that until recently at least, the job market for CM's was in very high demand, but I think that it may have dropped off with the economy. Of course that will be the case with anything right now pretty much.</p>
<p>From what I know, there aren't really any differences in terms of employment. Getting a MS in civil engineering without a thesis is pretty common and I haven't heard people having problems finding a job because of that.</p>
<p>For those on the fence between structural engineering and construction management, stanford's Design Construction Integration (DCI) program seems ideal. It doesn't force you to choose one or the other and gives you skills for both.</p>
<p>I thought DCI was a graduate program only and not an undergrad program?</p>
<p>this is true. its definitely graduate only to clarify</p>
<p>I owe you a structural engineering rundown when I finally kick The Flu. As it stands, I feel lousy and I'm only able to manage one-line responses.</p>
<p>Ohhh, that was two lines.</p>
<p>i will be waiting at the edge of my seat</p>
<p>I should add that if you go into project management in construction, you'll do a lot of estimating (as in costs based on drawings), RFI's (clarifications needed from the architect because of something unclear in drawings or specs), permits, budgeting, and some other stuff. </p>
<p>Short-term scheduling is usually done by superintendents. Long-term scheduling is usually done by project managers or others in the office.</p>
<p>Okay, going through each of your factors:</p>
<p>Cost of education: Per above, you’ll need a masters if you want to do any cool stuff in structural engineering. It’ll take 1 to 2 years, and you’ll likely be able to get one of the programs to pay for it.</p>
<p>Difficulty: Per above, it’s calculationally intense. I do calculations pretty much all day long. There’s a lot of bookkeeping involved, and a lot of little details that you have to keep in mind when you’re doing your work. Then you add in the complex nature of trying to design a building that’s still changing, and doing the math to design beams and columns to support everything is a little like nailing jello to a wall. There’s a lot of redoing things and it can get frustrating even if you’re a pretty even-keeled person.</p>
<p>Employability: Same sort of thing as with construction management… We can be three months into a design and suddenly your work will go away because the owner’s decided they don’t want to spend the money on a new building right now. You stop everything, they pay you for what you’ve done, but you don’t have lunch money for tomorrow. It’s unnerving, particularly in times like we’re going through right now. If your company has diversified enough, then you’ll be okay, but even the most established companies have to rein things in during droughts.</p>
<p>Salary: I don’t know about construction management salaries, but the ones cited by Ken for structural engineering sound about right. I guess we get paid less!</p>
<p>Job security: If you do a good job, you’ll have security. (Probably.)</p>
<p>General job satisfaction: This is why I think we all do what we do. It’s nice to point and be like, “I designed that.” There’s something very earthy and satisfying about putting pencil to paper and doing math and using your judgment and coming up with beams and columns that are going to be there for fifty or a hundred years. Every day we create our own legacy.</p>
<p>Stress: I’ve been ahead of schedule approximately once. It was a nice feeling. When the owner gets stressed, the contractor and architect get stressed, and they yell at all the subs. When the subs get yelled at, my project manager gets annoyed, and then my design managers get annoyed. When they get annoyed, I end up with more work. When I end up with more work, I get stressed. There’s little room for error and everything has to be done yesterday. You have to work with a high degree of accuracy and you don’t have much time to get things done. </p>
<p>Re: Danger. It depends upon what side you’re on. If you’re a design structural engineer, I’ve had a few paper cuts this year. I got really used to wearing boots every day on my old job and broke out the cute high heels when I got my desk job, resulting in a sprained ankle. When I was a forensic structural engineer and we’d go out crawling on failures all the time, I’ve known people whose swing stages have fallen out from under them and they had to be rescued as they dangled from their safety lines on the side of a building. That’ll mess you up, too, both physically and mentally. One guy at my old firm walked backwards off the edge of a building. He did not survive. It depends upon what you do.</p>
<p>Hours: For my design gig, 9AM-5PM, technically. This is usually more like 7AM-6PM, and some Saturdays and Sundays. People don’t say anything about it, but it’s a big competition to work a ridiculous number of hours so that you look the best. (Rather, so you look like a total workaholic.) Workaholics get rewarded.</p>
<p>Day in the Life... </p>
<p>I do not do early unless it’s absolutely necessary. I usually get to work around 8 AM. I have a nice office in our open floor plan arrangement… Big u-shaped desk with enough room for the myriad 24”x36” plan sheets I shuffle around all day. It’s a beautiful office space on three floors of a skyscraper in downtown Houston. I log onto my computer when I get here, answer e-mails and fill in time sheets for fifteen minutes, then I open my Revit files and get to work. I usually don’t have all the information I need in order to do what I need to do… There’s a lot of judgment work and I get to guess a lot more than I’d like. (When I guess wrong, I get to redesign things later.) From then ‘til lunch, unless I have a rare meeting, it’s just me and my calculator and my computer, and I literally sit here and do math and figure out how to design things. Right now, I’m doing horizontal framing, which is pretty uncomplicated… Unless you have some really awkwardly complex geometry, which we do. It can get tedious, figuring out whether I need to count torsion effects in a particular design, or whether I really need to be counting all of this load here because I’m also counting it in this other place, or breaking load patterns into various cases to ensure that I’m designing for the maximum effect that each beam is going to see.</p>
<p>Lunch is at 11:30. One of three things happens. Either I take a book (COMPLETELY unrelated to engineering!) and have lunch for half an hour to an hour in an adjacent building’s lobby, or we’ll all go out to lunch together to a nearby restaurant to celebrate someone’s birthday or to have a change of pace, or we’ll have lunch brought in and have a seminar presented, either by an outside vendor or by a coworker. We learn a lot, because things are always changing. We’re always running into problems that we haven’t encountered before, or the building code is changing, or we’re finding better ways to do things. When those things happen, we present our experiences to the entire group. We have a R&D group in Austin that develops new tools and spreadsheets for us to use, or investigates problems we encounter in practice that we haven’t figured out how to approach yet. Lots of learning, lots of figuring out the best way to do things, (lots of really, really good free lunches!!).</p>
<p>The afternoon is spent doing mostly the same thing as I did during the morning. Occasionally, someone will stop by to ask a question about something I’ve designed, or I’ll need to address something that the quality control check picked up, or I’ll go and ask someone’s opinion about a weird design element that I’m not sure how to address. I usually pack things up at about six, and I usually take work home with me.</p>
<p>It can get monotonous. We have five on the design team, and thousands of custom beams and columns to do calculations for, and every element is very slightly different. I’ve been working on this project for a year and a half now, and we’re wrapping up this spring. It’s tough to <em>not</em> get bored, and I will not be doing this for the rest of my life.</p>
<p>Note that this is from the point of view of a junior design engineer, and that not every project involves doing horizontal framing design for a year-plus. There’s more field work for some, and as you move up in the ranks, you do a lot more teaching and a lot more interaction with the client. There’s also forensic engineering, which is what I used to do, and when we had work to do, it was a lot of fun. You’d see different things every day, and I’d always have four or five projects going on at a single time. When I’d get bored, I’d work on something else.</p>
<p>Hope this helps you out, and ask questions if you have any.</p>
<p>If I saw the CM salary number a few months ago, I wouldn't have believed it. Now that I've talked to a few people and pieced information together, I think that figure is entirely believable. I know a few people in my company who have been working in the industry 10+ years, did not have a college degree, and are now making 6 figures (significantly over $100k). And they aren't even executives.</p>
<p>The pay probably varies a lot more for CM's than structural engineers though. The field that you're in (highways vs. luxury high-rises for example) and your location are major factors.</p>