Being a civil engineer - working at Kier

[00:00:01] Omar 1 Birmingham is busy.

[00:00:02] Omar Birmingham is being built. 

[00:00:04] Omar Birmingham is the best place to study. Built environment. My name is Omar Yehia. I studied Birmingham City University's Bachelor of Civil Engineering and I graduated in 2021. I've joined Kier on the Highways Project team as an Assistant Design Engineer. Kier is a big construction company. I work with the highway department. Within our scope of projects, we work on pavement designs, gap closures with the road restraint systems, bridges, tunnels. Our Kier office is just down the road from Birmingham City University campus, so it's like 300-400 metres there. We do offer a good amount of graduate schemes, summer placements here in industry. In Kier, we get to work on major projects like Windy Harbour Scheme and M5 scheme. Studying Civil Engineering at BCU was really helpful to my career. All the lecturers were very helpful. They helped me a lot during my studies and any concerns that I had. They also helped me to work in BCU. I'd been offered the job to work as a civil engineer technician, which was helping me to get the experience I want before moving to the industry. I've been exposed to the terminology I need for the industry, so before joining Kier was a really good experience to have, and when I joined, I was ready to hit the ground and keep going and develop my career.

[00:01:14] Alex I feel like it's a common perception that built environment is very technical and logical. I think it's it goes beyond that, even though it was my technical skills that made me decide to go into that direction, I think it was my creativity that led me to succeed in it. The built environment is so big and diverse that there's room for anyone with any set of skills. It's not only about the designers and construction workers, it's also about the people who are good at managing, planning and organising. I'm excited to see what Birmingham will look like in the future and where I will fit into its built environment.