<p>I have a strong interest in traveling and civil engineering, is there a way to combine the two? I am afraid I won’t be able to travel much with the typical engineering job that allows for only 2 weeks of vacation, unless I end up living in the same city as most of my family and use the 2 weeks vacation entirely for travel.</p>
<p>I also want to do humanitarian work through engineering similar to that of Engineers Without Borders. Is there a non-traditional path for civil engineering(NOT USACE) that might fit my interests?</p>
<p>My neighbor is a CE. He’s almost never home - 2 weeks at a time on site. Rarely is the site near home. Currently he’s near the arctic circle helping to lay out a town.</p>
Do not confuse vacation and business traveling. They are two totally different things. When you are sent away on a business trip it is to work, not go sightseeing. Any sightseeing you will do is a bonus.</p>
<p>While you may have time to see and do some things you want to, particularly on longer trips, you might be limited in what you can do due to time constraints. You may not be sent near any vacation hot spots. While you might dream of sipping drinks on a beach on Oahu, in reality I doubt that option will present itself, ever.</p>
<p>I used to get a good bit of sight-seeing in by using weekends / vacation time. Most companies allow you to book a return flight whenever you want, so if I had to go to Chicago M-F, I’d book the return flight on Sunday instead of Friday, and just pay for two days of hotel rooms (which usually isn’t bad since most chains have reduced weekend rates and give free days). </p>
<p>What’s even better is that if you work M-F in the same location for multiple weeks, they’ll usually fly you home on Friday and back on Monday. But, what you call “home” is up to you as long as the cost is the same. I’ve taken several weekend trips with free airfare that way. </p>
<p>The best part about traveling, though, is the frequent flier miles, hotel points, and car rental points. In my consulting days, I took many “free vacations”. My honeymoon was a three week European vacation with two free first class r/t tickets, 21 free hotel nights in 4 cities, and free car rental. </p>
<p>It’s great… until you have kids.</p>
<p>But back to the OP: how much you travel depends on what you do. If you’re a civil engineer that works on road projects or highway bridge integrity, I doubt you’ll travel much. However, a civil engineer that works as a consultant to design the supports for chemical reactors would travel all over the world about a third of the year (during design, you’re at home, during construction, you’re at the site).</p>
<p>That’s specifically why I mentioned “particularly on longer trips.” Obviously you’ll have more “vacation time” if you’re going somewhere for a week or more, but if you’re going to fly in on a Monday night and back on Wednesday night you won’t have much. I actually applied to one job that would do this, for example during a week you might go to work on Monday, fly somewhere Monday night, do work related things on Tuesday and Wednesday, fly back on Wednesday night, drive somewhere for a meeting on Thursday during the day, and then return back to normal work on Friday. That was one of my interviewers’ schedule for the previous week and was considered a normal thing that you might do every few weeks. This job required a substantial amount of travel. Needless to say I was not very interested in that job!</p>
<p>I have worked with a few steam turbine engineers who used to work for companies like GE and MD&A. Their travel definitely was not glamorous. Some power plants are not in the nicest of places. They would be at a plant for anywhere from 8 weeks (for an overhaul) to one year (for a new power plant construction). And those were 12 hour days, 6 to 7 days per week.</p>
<p>My H (Ph.D. MechE) travels a few times/year. Yeah, he’s got those fly in on a Monday, go to D.O.E meetings and fly-out on Wed kind of trips. But he’s R&D, so he does a lot of testing, too. In the past several years he’s tested primarily in Germany, Italy (a lot), England, and Poland. These trips are minimally two weeks, to allow time to do the testing and with the realization that you are working on a European schedule, in terms of technicians, etc. Sometimes it’s hard to get someone working on a weekend. Usually, he’ll spend part of Sat. crunching numbers, but then he’ll use the rest of Sat. afternoon and Sun to sight-see. He’s also been to South Korea, Poland, Puerto Rico, and Columbia (trouble-shooting). No sight-seeing in Columbia, and actually, with all the security he was under, I’m glad he’s not had to do that in several years.</p>
<p>Thanks for the insight! I was referring to vacation travel, not business travel. A couple of days in between site visits and the home office isn’t exactly my idea of travel, but at least some site seeing could be done. This seems like the most realistic way of combining work and travel. I am leaning more towards consulting/structural engineering so there’s some possibility of business travel at least.</p>
<p>Any comments on the second paragraph of my OP?:
“I also want to do humanitarian work through engineering similar to that of Engineers Without Borders. Is there a non-traditional path for civil engineering(NOT USACE) that might fit my interests?”</p>
<p>"This job required a substantial amount of travel. Needless to say I was not very interested in that job! "</p>
<p>That job does sound pretty stressful. Even though that extensive travel is only every few weeks, it IS intense.</p>
<p>My dad travels all over the world in his job as an engineering professor and consultant. He loves it, but I don’t know how he keeps up the pace! I’ve gone with him on a couple of trips, and they’re utterly exhausting. Meetings from early in the morning until dinner time. He will usually take a day or two for sightseeing. Right now he’s in Poland. But he’s missing the Longhorns playing in the NCAA baseball tournament, so he’s not happy!</p>
<p>He must love what he does, because he’s 72 and can’t see himself retiring for another few years. I hope I have his stamina when I’m his age.</p>
<p>zebes, has your H been offered co-worker hospitality on his assignments? I never went overseas, but in my domestic away-from-home assignments, which could last from a few days to months (with visits home) I was struck by how different sightseeing is from working and living with people from other parts of the country. And often, but not always, we were taken under the wing of a fellow engineer and invited home to dinner, or taken out to interesting places. Other times the team would travel together on weekends to see the sights. What I’m trying to say is that in my experience, working in an unfamiliar part of the US was a valuable and interesting experience, and at least as memorable as typical sightseeing.</p>
<p>If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re asking if he’s ever been to his co-workers homes when he’s been working in their country. Yes, sometimes … this past time in Germany he went to a barbeque one of the guys was throwing at his home, and a bunch of the guys went to a local go cart track, actually. Pretty cool track he said … had a blast. But a lot of times … no, he and maybe one other person who travels with him are on their own. Just depends. Usually if they’re doing anything with the locals it’ll be a meal where they’ll go out together. </p>
<p>How difficult is it to land a job with an international firm where I would be able to work in different countries? I’ve heard it is very possible if one is up to the task of being away from friends and family for a while.</p>