Glossary
Civil Engineer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential civil engineer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key civil engineer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in civil engineer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Change order
- Contract change.
- Design criteria
- Requirements for design.
- Factor of safety
- Design margin.
- FE exam
- Fundamentals of Engineering exam.
- Foundation
- Supports structures.
- Geotechnical
- Soil and rock engineering.
- Hydraulics
- Water flow.
- Load
- Force on a structure.
- Load rating
- Bridge capacity.
- PE
- Professional Engineer license.
- RFI
- Request for information.
- Right-of-way
- Land for infrastructure.
- Specification
- Required standards.
- Stormwater
- Rain runoff.
- Value engineering
- Reducing cost without losing function.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Civil Engineer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Civil Engineer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.