Civil Engineering Photos

Photo Credit: Jessie Benaglio

Shown here is the repair of the top part of a manhole. This structure is a catch basin, as indicated by the type of cover. This cover is designed to be placed in line with a curb in a roadway. The fresh concrete that is supporting the cover in this photo could be called a riser or corbel. Usually, the riser is above the corbel, which is a cone shaped section which flares down into the structure. Since this is a repair, the riser and corbel are basically 2-in-1. The reason this catch basin was repaired was the settlement of the roadway over time which caused the drainage to become unlevel.

Photo Credit: Karl Jansen

Seen here is another construction technique of the early European immigrants to the colonies in America. This technique includes alternating which wall segment continues into the corner, thus improving the structural integrity of the building. This technique is centuries old, and yet it can still be seen in new building construction projects today.

Photo Credit: Karl Jansen

Seen here is a construction technique of the early European immigrants to the colonies in America. These immigrants brought with them their log cabin making skills. Among these skills included the floor joist notching. You can see on the side of the log cabin that there are notches cut out of the wall in which joists that support the floor, and potentially a loft, where placed.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen here is a before and after picture of a concrete pour of a walkway entrance. This shot allows the viewer to see the inner rebar structure of the steps as well as the formwork necessary to cast the concrete in the shape desired. Formwork construction is usually the most labor intensive component of cast-in-place concrete construction.

Photo Credit: Zephaniah Varley

Seen here is a machine called a roadheader excavating the 4th bore of the Caldecott tunnel near Oakland, California being built by Parsons Brinckerhoff of Antioch, California. A roadheader is a machine with a rotating cutter head that is mounted on a boom and moved around to eat through the rock in front of the machine. A loading device on the front of the machine then gathers the cut rock bits, called spoil, onto a conveyer belt to be moved out of the tunnel for disposal.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen here is a cavity wall under construction.  A cavity wall is a type of masonry wall that is a composite of both concrete masonry units (CMU) and bricks or stones.  It works by creating a gap between the building and the façade we see on the street made of bricks or stones.  The black portion of the building is a waterproof coating on the CMUs that inhibits moisture from entering the building. The green (to the left of the black, next to the stones) is screen like material that keeps mortar from falling down the cavity and blocking the drainage ports at the bottom.  The stones or bricks then go on the outside of this screen material to finish the outside of the building.  The stones or bricks are connected to the CMUs by wires that extend and keep the stones aligned vertically, but carry no gravity load.  One advantage of wall construction of this type is the stones or bricks can then move freely with temperature variations and won’t crack or affect the inner CMU wall.  This design also allows for a not perfect water seal to be used on the stones or brick because the waterproofing is the black coating behind the visible finish

Learn more about Cavity Walls

Photo Credit: Jessie Benaglio

In Cinque Terre, Italy, five little towns on the north west coast, has rocks laid in a pattern on the roofs. The rocks help hold the shingles on due from the strong winds that come from the Mediterranean Sea and the winds from the mountains.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen above is a massive mobile hydraulic crane fitted with a jib. Cranes like this are advantageous because they can be setup and taken down with relative ease, and have large lifting capacities. The jib on this crane allows it to reach far over objects, like the store front in this photo, and access the back of the building far from any open space where a crane can be set up. This allows the workers to position objects, like air conditioning units, on a roof that would otherwise be inaccessible by a crane without a jib attached.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

This is a typically sized excavator that can be seen at construction sites across the world. It is an extremely versatile machine and can be used for many tasks including digging, loading, or in this case jack hammering. This particular attachment at the end of the boom is a jack hammer that is powered through the unit’s hydraulic system. The jack hammer can break through concrete with relative ease and transform large structural components into smaller manageable pieces for the purpose of material handling during a demolition operation.