Rakshita Nagayach, Civil Engineer at Urban Administration & Development Dept.

,
SGSITS Batch 2015
Written Sep 18, 2014

I am a final year Civil Engineering student. I'ld like to suggest you a few topics.
1) Road construction (or widening): A civil engineer carries a high probability to
carry road construction sometime in his/her career. When one studies the construction
methodology of road-laying, he not only learns the basics of road laying, but also the
behaviour of different types of soils and the safety measures for each. The field has a
great potential as a project.
2) Bridge Construction (or Rehabilitation) : Bridge construction comprises of a
large number of construction elements e.g. beginning from the foundation laying to
columns, piers, pedestals, slabs,etc. Parts studied in building or other RCC structures are
all the subset of bridge construction process. Rehabilitation work,though, is harder to
find, but it gives an extensive idea of basic methods of constructions.
3) Water Treatment (or Sewage Treatment) : This project ends up making the
student an expert in various basic but great technologies of water treatment. Water
standards are a must to remember for a civil engineer. This project helps a lot in this
field.
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Akshay Handrale, Civil and Water Management Engineering student.

Updated Dec 11, 2013

I am a civil engineering student. Here is what I am working on.

Low cost housing.
Food, water and shelter are the three fundamental needs of man. And being a civil
engineer you can certainly contribute to the shelter aspect.
Housing is something you see everyday, it is really really inefficient. In developing
countries, like India, where majority of the population is poor, uneducated and growing
fast, low cost housing can play an important role.
1. By low cost housing, what I mean to say is the houses must be very efficiently
designed. They must be utilize every corner of the plot of land. No portion of land
should be wasted due to bad design.
2. The light and ventilation should be excellent so that the cost of artificial lighting and
ventilation is reduced. It might not sound that significant but taking on account the
money wasted on electricity for just 2 hours extra per day, and multiply that by 70
years (average life of houses) you get a significant amount of $$$. All this can be
avoided just by designing the house properly, by placing the windows at proper
places.
3. The material used should be reusable and durable. This is just common sense.
Here is a picture from Internet to get you all pumped up for your project :)

Best of luck
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Amit Shukla, Engineer(civil).

Written Mar 1

I have previously written for the same question. Here you can find out the list of Projects
that could be done in Civil engineering..
1.Earthquake Related Projects:

Earthquake vibration control using modified frame-shear wall

Advanced Earthquake Resistant Techniques
Seismic isolation devices
Energy dissipation devices for seismic design.
Reservoir induced seismcity
Failure of foundation due to earthquake
2. Surveying & Levelling

Advance Technology in Surveying

Various software to analyse the survey data
Development Of Remote Monitoring System For Civil Engineering
3. Engineering Materials

Smart materials

Basalt rock fibre (brf)

Cellular Lightweight Concrete
Mineral admixtures for high performance concrete
Glass fiber reinforced concrete
Geosynthetics
Bamboo as a building material
Silica fume concrete
Fly-ash concrete pavement
Non-destructive testing of concrete
Building Construction
Causes Prevention and Repair of Cracks In Building
Rehabilitation techniques.
Stability of high rise buildings.
Corrosion Mechanism, Prevention & Repair Measures of RCC Structure
Analysis for seismic retrofitting of buildings
Advance construction techniques
Formwork types & design
Green buildings
Passive solar energy buildings
Laminated floorings
4.Highway & Transportation Engineering

Advanced Pavement Design

Intelligent transport system
Flexible pavement
Rural road development
Highway safety
Mixed traffic control & behavior continuously reinforced concrete pavement
Automated highway systems
4. Environmental Engineering

Sewage treatment plant

Air pollution & its control
Marine pollution
Logistic management of solid waste
E waste disposal
Environmental Impact Assessment
6. Irrigation & Water Resources Engineering

Watershed management
Water resources engineering
Interlinking of rivers
Hydraulic & Hydrological impacts on Bridges
7. Soil Mechanics & GeoTechnical Engineering

Soil Liquefaction
Ready mix concrete plants
Pile foundation
Improvement of bearing capacity of sandy soil by grouting

Ground improvement technique

Use of plastic as soil stabilizer
Erosion control in slope
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Kasee Sreenivas, Techno Management Professional , Senior Contracts Engineer, HCC

Ltd
Updated Sep 29

Let me tell you. It purely depends on your field of interest.

Ill give you some ideas. You can check the feasibility and work on them accordingly.
Here you go,
DESIGN

Analysis and design of a multi storey building/ shopping mall. (Not the
conventional buildings). Choose a building/mall which has post tensioning.
Youll enjoy.
Analysis and design of steel truss. Take a bridge and make a case study.
If youre totally into design and wish to be a successful structural engineer, you can
work on long span bridge designs. Study the moments and deflections in detail.
You can go for RCC bridge design as well.
There are number of components to design a bridge. (Before all that, you need to
know the actual construction process of a bridge). Starting from topography,
geological survey, tests on soil, excavation, foundations etc.
If you really wish to be a structural engineer, you need to understand the total
procedure first. Hope you understood.
You need to have a guide who is experienced in design.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING.1
1.Take water samples from your city from various places. Mark them.

o
o

Study the quality of water from various sources. Make necessary tests. Test
BOD , COD etc of water.
You need to have a lab with good equipment for this project.
Make graphical analysis representing the quality of water from various
places and various sources.
Submit it to your local authority after your project gets signed.
2. You can design a sewage tank for a locality calculating the inflow and outflow
from the households.
You need to gather information like:
Population in the area,
Type of locality, (Outflow is different for industrial and residential area)

o
o
o

Domestic usage,
Wastage etc.
Take all parameters into consideration.
You need to build a small model to prove your analysis.

TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING.
You can work on Building of Roads using plastic wastes or Industrial wastes.
Make a cost comparison. You can represent the facts stating how much carbon emission
is reduced by constructing roads this way.
Minimizing the traffic at congested road intersections.
In case you take this topic, you can work on the peak times of traffic.
There are certain times in a day when more vehicles are on the roads and some other
times where there is no traffic/minimal traffic.
Take a live example (from your vicinity) and make the necessary assumptions and
calculate the traffic influx. Take a lot of photos during different times of the day.
After making a detailed report, mention some steps like:
a) Using Public transportation at the peak time would reduce the traffic.
b) Suggesting alternate routes during the peak times etc.
Your project is mainly weighed on authenticity. Dont copy your seniors projects. Taking
an idea is not wrong. Copying A-Z is.
Modified parking systems.
We mostly see this kind of parking.

Image source: [1]

We all know how difficult it is to find space to park our vehicles in congested areas. So,
give a thought on some project which requires less space for parking more vehicles.
Make necessary assumptions and calculations. Think innovatively. To give you an
example, 45 degree parking can incorporate more vehicles in a given space when
compared to conventional parking.
This is just an example. Think on different other possibilities.
If there is any unused space in the vicinity, you could suggest a basement parking and
ground floor parking with the modified arrangement. You can calculate the number of
vehicles that can fit in that area. This way you can provide space for traffic in congested
areas.
If you succeed in a project something like this, you can submit the report to the nearest
municipal corporation or a local body.
You can as well give a thought on combined subjects.
Example: Behavior of Unsaturated soil mechanics in Highway infrastructure
OR
Design of double lane road bridge deck slab. etc.
There are thousands of good topics. I just gave you a small idea.

GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING:
...
(more)
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Vinay Nagrani, Civil Engineer, Management Student, Once I did a project too!
Written Jul 3

Thanks for A2A

FORMWORK

I went through all the answers. Everyone have mentioned very useful and interesting
topics. Almost all the topics had been covered except one - Formwork
I strongly believe that this topic has vast scope seeing present situation in Indian
Construction sector. Though Big Major Construction Companies have started using
different kinds of formwork still 70% dont because of Financial occurance. This thing is
not given as much importance as it should be.
MIVAN Technology is best Example of this.
The new technology in India that saves times, cost and improves quality of Construction.
This Aluminium components are very cost effective for repetitive buildings layout and

for above the plinth level. This system is very unique as all the components in the
building including slab, beams, walls, columns, staircase, balconies are of concrete and
there is no need of brick work.
Almost all high rise buildings can use this technology. As the final year project, to design
a new technology or to improve the formwork standards for those 70% who can find it
cheap and which improves quality will be very useful. This project could be unique and
worth trying.
Ps - I just mentioned this idea because all the other rest are covered by others. I couldnt
find this, so I mentioned it. My final year project was related to SELF COMPACTING
CONCRETE and not formwork.
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Rishabh Jain, Nimble Civil Engineer

Written Jul 26

In Structural Engineering,
You can go for using different simulation softwares like STAAD to validate different
theorems used in structural analysis.
also you can compare the software results with the laboratory results and thus comment
on the accuracy of the software.
Else you can perform simulation on any building and thus analyse the generation of
stresses.
If you are willing to work hard, you can also learn finite element and then do the
simulation.
If you want to pursue projects in transportation engineering, then NMT is a good field.
You can also work transportation in smart cities. Else you could compare different
transport systems by doing a sample study and hence comment on the feasibility of
different systems under different conditions.
Traffic engineering is also one good field to work. You can do time headway study and
distribution in different areas. Also road safety is a major concern these days. You can
work in that line analysing the accident trends in your area, identifying the black spots
and hence suggesting measures to improve the situation.
If you want to do project in concrete technology, what you can do is try replacing cement
with pozzolanas like flyash, GGBS, metakaolin, RHA, Rubber Ash etc, mixing them in
different proportions and hence observing how the properties are modified under
different situations.
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Shivam Sharma, Degree in Civil Engineering

Written May 8

Try to do a project on planning, monitoring and scheduling. You can take help of any on
going project as per your interest. This type of project will not only help you to learn the

financial attributes involved in the live projects but also help you to learn planning and
scheduling. You can use the MS-Project and primavera software tools in this project.
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Pawan Bahuguna
Written Jul 3, 2014
Originally Answered: I am a final year civil engineering student in India. What are some project topic
recommendations?

There are lots of project topics for Civil, you can get idea at final year project website civil
section. FREE FINAL YEAR PROJECT'S: Civil
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James Rickman, Retired Engineer, Traveler, Farmer

Updated Jun 29

My senior year we had a class project to design a path for a road from point A to point B,
and we had to consider all the issues - future maintenance, present costs, and
minimizing disruption (displacing people and cutting up parcels of land). It was
interesting because depending on the route you would balance the cuts and fills of the
roadway differently especially comparing the more direct paths compared to trying to
stay along ridges.
In graduate school we did a project for a waste treatment system for a small town.
Some projects I have heard about are designing a rural water system, where they had to
decide which side of the road to run the line and figure when the population density was
too low to support the system, so they would stop the line there. Another was a design of
a bridge or truss using the minimum amount of material to still satisfy the design load.
A couple of fun projects are design a container to protect an egg - the student that can
drop the container the highest distance wins, and everyone has a weight limitation. A
concrete canoe race was another.
Good luck, Jim
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Ali Al-Hammoud, Lead Structural Design Engineer.

Written May 8

Undergraduate
1- Design of Building, Tower, Bridge, ...

Just be creative. The FYP project will give you an idea on how things happen in the real
lift. (5% only). What you learn in school is only a preparation to (Not working), but
learning at work. Because basically you graduate with a weight of 0 Kg as an engineer
and once you get to work, you start learning from scratch. School is just a buildup of
background that will facilitate how fast you grasp what you will learn at work.
Graduate
1- Lateral Stability of tall Structures. (Earthquake or Wind)
2- Strengthening and Rehabilitation (There are many ideas)

Floatation not designed for, Additional partial or full basement, Extension of upper
floors, Addition of swimming pool on roof, Transfer floor and new architectural
layout. The above entails getting into jacketing, Anchoring, FRP, Steel
Strenghtening, ...
3- Cyclic Analysis and Vibration of Banquet Hall in composite construction
You get the idea.
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Harry Singla, At the crossroads

Written Jan 4, 2015
Originally Answered: What are some civil engineering projects?

Chenab Bridge is an under-construction rail bridge, located between Bakkal and Kauri in
the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India. The 1,315m-long bridge is being
built at a height of 359m. Once completed, it will be the tallest rail bridge in the world.

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Samarth Bhandari
Written Aug 4, 2014
Originally Answered: I am a final year civil engineering student in India. What are some project topic
recommendations?

If you are into structure design:

Analysis and Design of Multi-story Residential R.C.C. Building with
ETABS/STAAD.Pro (Got me A+)
Design of Steel Foot-over Bridge
Design of a Railway Bridge
Design of a Water Tank (or other water resources)
I had also included scheduling and cost estimation in my project topic using Primavera
P6.
Relatively new topics:
Testing of concrete using NDT (Non Destructive Testing)
Application of Geographical Information System (GIS) in Management of
Construction
Strategies and Recommendations to Reduce Impact of Natural Disaster in
Structures
Building Information Modelling
Self Healing Concrete
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Jan Allan Dawson

Written May 12

A few ideas off the top of my head:

Flood control without a dam being the main focus; for instance, through levees and
percolation ponds, viaducts
Waste water/ sewer treatment management: One that delivers energy as a by-product
Road smoothing, rather than just widening
Govt building that provides some self-generating energy, and/ or more sustainable
Better potable water service to customers including better capturing and retaining
capabilities.
Improved urban planning for balanced distribution of systems
Alternative energy plant- uses less dirty resources.
Combination or tangents to these ideas
Lots of ideas can be had for better solutions for the present situations.
Thanks for the A2A.