Civil Engineering BEng (Hons) at Northumbria offers you the technical skills, analytical thinking, and real-world experience to shape the infrastructure that society depends on. Study core civil engineering disciplines spanning structural analysis, geotechnics, hydraulics, and sustainable design, supported by teaching staff who are active researchers in the field.
Northumbria’s specialist laboratories enable you to put theory into practice, from testing materials under load to hydraulic modelling, while field study and external visits broaden your experience further.
An optional year-long placement or study abroad year strengthens your industry readiness, while accreditation by the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM) means your qualification is recognised on the path to Incorporated Engineer (LEng) status, and with further learning, Chartered Engineer (CEng).
This extended degree offers an alternative route into higher education if you don't meet the standard entry requirements. Your foundation year covers mechanical, civil and automotive engineering, and you can build skills to develop sustainable solutions, learning from experienced practitioners and applying principles to real-world problems in labs and workshops.
Focus on core civil engineering principles, from mechanics and materials to structural design and surveying. By the end of this year, you'll be equipped to analyse engineering problems and communicate technical ideas with confidence.
Tackle more complex territory: structural analysis, geotechnics, hydraulics, and construction project management with Building Information Modelling (BIM). By the end of this year, you'll be ready to apply advanced methods to real engineering challenges.
Your optional placement or study abroad year places you inside the industry, working alongside experienced civil engineers on live projects. This year builds practical skills, professional networks, and commercial awareness that can strengthen both your final year projects and graduate prospects.
In your final year, advanced modules in geotechnical engineering, structural analysis, and environmental engineering combine with a substantial research project. By the end of this year, you'll be equipped to approach complex, real-world engineering challenges with professional-level rigour and confidence.
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This extended degree offers an alternative route into higher education if you don't meet the standard entry requirements. Your foundation year covers mechanical, civil and automotive engineering, and you can build skills to develop sustainable solutions, learning from experienced practitioners and applying principles to real-world problems in labs and workshops.
Focus on core civil engineering principles, from mechanics and materials to structural design and surveying. By the end of this year, you'll be equipped to analyse engineering problems and communicate technical ideas with confidence.
Tackle more complex territory: structural analysis, geotechnics, hydraulics, and construction project management with Building Information Modelling (BIM). By the end of this year, you'll be ready to apply advanced methods to real engineering challenges.
Your optional placement or study abroad year places you inside the industry, working alongside experienced civil engineers on live projects. This year builds practical skills, professional networks, and commercial awareness that can strengthen both your final year projects and graduate prospects.
In your final year, advanced modules in geotechnical engineering, structural analysis, and environmental engineering combine with a substantial research project. By the end of this year, you'll be equipped to approach complex, real-world engineering challenges with professional-level rigour and confidence.
Module information is indicative and is reviewed annually therefore may be subject to change. Applicants will be informed if there are any changes.
You will learn about some of the issues which will underpin your learning and practice as a civil/construction engineer. You will learn about the mechanics of materials, material qualities, material properties at a micro level and at a macro level.Through practical and other class work you will consider and explore a range of the most commonly used materials in the industry. Materials studied will include rocks and soils, steel, concrete and timber. In addition, you will examine alternative material use to achieve enhanced sustainability, including the use of recycled materials, and you will develop skills in designing concrete structural members through your understanding of material properties and capacities.
Surveying refers to the determination, representation, and analysis of the positions of key features in both the natural and built environment. It is a fundamental skill, based on accuracy and precision, that underpins all engineering and construction projects. You will learn this through our introduction to the principles of surveying. In lectures, we will explain the theory and concepts of surveying, and help you to develop practical and mathematical surveying skills. We will help you to understand how engineering surveying can contribute to the successful design and completion of engineering projects through discussion in class. Your surveying skills will be developed through practical work. You will start by using automatic levels, learning about booking procedures, error check, and calculations. You will then progress by using total stations, collecting angular surveys for key engineering applications and checking, assessing, and correcting your work to optimise the survey quality. Finally, we will introduce you to a range of cutting edge, high precision surveying instrumentation such as terrestrial laser scanners, and differential GPS. We will take you from data collection, through processing and analysis to interpretation of results.
You will learn about the basic fundamentals of mechanics and structures, which are essential for your developing a career in civil/construction engineering.
You will learn about a range of relevant topics including the consideration of forces and solving problems related to forces within systems. You will learn about principles of stress and strain and consider related factors when solving problems of this nature. You will learn about some of the techniques used to consider the impact of loads on various beans and sections. There will also be an opportunity to learn about associated theories linking to energy methods of structural analysis.
In fluid mechanics you will learn about the fundamentals of fluid behaviour, density, pressure, viscosity, laminar and turbulent flow, hydrostatics, floating structures, the interaction of fluids with solid bodies and fluid flow in pipes. In soil mechanics you will learn about the composition of soils, their strength, stress-strain behaviour and modes of failure and the compression and consolidation of soils under short and long term loading. You will also learn about liquid flows through soils and its link to soil strength and behaviour.
In this module you will learn about the principles and considerations of structural design and the communication of design work. You will be encouraged to develop your hand sketching in recognition that this is an important skill required to communicate early design ideas as well as to aid self-reflection and design development. You will learn how to use CAD software to communicate your design ideas. Your technical drawing skills will be developed, and you will gain experience of producing Civil Engineering drawings. You will gain knowledge and skills through generic design considerations to engender a holistic appreciation of the design process prior to addressing calculation work for simple structural elements in steel, concrete, timber, or masonry.
Basic algebra and trigonometry
Transposition, simplification, quadratic equations, simultaneous equations, functions and identities.
Basic calculus
Derivative as slope and rate of change, standard derivatives; product, quotient and function of a function rules; integration
as reverse of differentiation, standard integrals, area under a curve; solution of simple differential equations by direct integration.
Complex numbers
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, complex conjugate and division in algebraic form. The Argand diagram. Polar form and
exponential form, with multiplication and division. De Moivre's theorem (powers and roots). Locus problems.
Calculus
Implicit, parametric and logarithmic differentiation. Maxima and minima. MacLaurin's series. Partial differentiation, first order change, analysis of errors, method of least squares. Integration techniques (substitution, partial fractions, by parts) and simple applications of integration.
Matrices and Determinants
Second and third order determinants, evaluation, properties, Cramer's Rule for solution of simultaneous equations; matrices, addition, subtraction, multiplication, transpose, inverse (via adjoint), solution of simultaneous linear equations by matrix inversion.
Vectors
Sum, difference, magnitude, components, Cartesian representation in three dimensions; scalar and vector products, angle between vectors, application to simple geometrical and physical problems.
Differential Equations
Solution of first order by separation of variables and integrating factor; second order with constant coefficients, auxiliary
equation, complementary function, particular integral by substitution.
You will develop your understanding of academic conventions in UK higher education aligned to your level of study, including expectations around critical analysis, structure, argumentation, evidencing, and referencing. The module focuses on developing communication strategies that will help you express your ideas clearly and coherently in written assignments and spoken activities. You will also reflect on your current academic and language skills and develop strategies for development ahead of your assessments.
You will learn about typical management practice and activity necessary at the early stages of construction projects. There is a strong emphasis on the key pre-construction aspects of such projects in this module. Themes can include: the planning for, and management of, construction project-level organisations and resources; the use of construction production information, the management of design during the construction process, the role that Digital Construction solutions including Building Information Modelling (BIM) have in this process; construction project planning processes; and the production of construction solutions for specific project challenges.
This module provides an introduction to the Earth’s materials, their formation, development, and behaviour and explores how they impact on considerations for site investigation and assessment. You will learn about geological processes and structures and the formation, classification and erosion of rock and soils and the interpretation of geological maps. You will learn about the planning and implementation of site investigations, the interpretation of borehole data and various field testing techniques as used on construction sites. You will learn about the structure, content and use of relevant codes and standards. You will learn about soil improvement on construction sites, suitable fill materials for different construction activities and about the different types of temporary and permanent geotechnical structures commonly encountered and the concept of bearing capacity and simple sizing calculations and construction techniques for common types of foundations.
You will learn about the important theories, principles, and procedures that form the basis of structural analysis. You will be able to develop analytical skills and an appreciation of how this knowledge might be applied in practice to analyse simple and complex structures. You will focus on types of structure and supports and analysis of stress and strain due to load temperature changes. You will also address the influence lines for determinate structures, analytical principles of indeterminate structures and buckling instability of short and slender columns. Finally, the basic principles of ultimate load analysis will be introduced.
This module develops your understanding and knowledge of reinforced concrete, steel, and timber structures, and your ability to design these structures. In this module, you will learn about topics such as the design of reinforced concrete beams, slabs and columns, and the preparation of reinforced concrete drawings. You will also learn about the
design of steel beams, columns, frames and connections, and the design of timber posts, beams and connections. You will make use of computer methods to design structures and learn to check and validate results from computer models.
You will study the hydraulics of open channel flow, pipelines and pumps, as well as focusing on engineering hydrology, where you will study water supply and catchment hydrology.
You will learn to apply for a 12 month placement in a construction engineering company. You will do this through developing and improving your skills in the following areas:
1. Communication
2. CVs
3. Interviews
4. H&S within the workplace
5. Professional conduct
6. Teams
7. Constructing a Learning Plan
8. Evidencing your learning
9. Reflection in the workplace
10. Networking
The module is designed to further develop your expertise in engineering mathematics, focusing on algebraic methods of solving engineering computational problems. On this module, you will learn about the use of matrix algebra to solve large systems of equations, together with the formulation and solution of algebraic eigenvalue problems involving differential equations from the perspective of an engineer. You will focus on the fundamentals of matrix theory that underlie powerful practical numerical algorithms for solving systems of linear equations and boundary value problems. As you explore the mathematical techniques, you will discover how each is used in applications of civil engineering problems, including structural analysis, and vibration and stability of structures. This module will enable you to fully understand the tools behind finite element analysis, an important method in engineering.
Outline syllabus (the syllabus includes all or part of the following topics):
1. Vectors and matrices
2. Determinant and rank
3. Linear systems of equations
4. Algebraic eigenvalue problem
5. Galerkin, Ritz, and Finite Element Method
6. Elements of scientific programming
You will develop your understanding of academic conventions in UK higher education aligned to your level of study, including expectations around critical analysis, structure, argumentation, evidencing, and referencing. The module focuses on developing communication strategies that will help you express your ideas clearly and coherently in written assignments and spoken activities. You will also reflect on your current academic and language skills and develop strategies for development ahead of your assessments.
Optional modules may include:
In this module you explore the role of engineering interventions in addressing the current Climate Emergency and designing resilient solutions to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. Through this exploration, you will grow to appreciate the relationships between environmental management and sustainability. On completion of the module, you have an understanding of how environmental engineering theory through the complete life cycle of the project, enhancing your ability to minimise adverse impacts and more generally improving your future employment prospects in the civil engineering industry and more widely.
You will have the opportunity to build upon your learning from previous modules and apply it to geotechnical engineering design problems. You will cover the stability of earth slopes, lateral earth pressure and retaining structures, shallow and deep foundations, settlement of foundations, soil stabilization techniques, use of standards and codes of practice and the derivation of design parameters from site investigations.
Your learning on this module will start from a client brief for a project. The brief for the project will be based upon a real project and will be communicated in a realistic manner through correspondence and role-play client meetings. In groups, you will explore the meaning of the brief and the business relationship with the client, develop a design team and key objectives and milestones and then work on options for the technical solution of the problem, considering factors such as cost, required construction technology and techniques, sustainability issues, health, safety and design risk management and the requirements for the business success of the different parties involved. At all stages in the module you will engage in reflective consideration of your learning, which will be inspired by other design and construction examples taken from industry.
You will learn to establish the scope, aims and objectives of a research topic, developing a clear problem statement and identifying specific research questions to be answered. You will acquire an understanding of research ethics, being required to complete an online university ethics submission in line with university policy prior to commencing your research project. You will learn to critically review published literature relating to the topic, including how to distinguish between different types of literature such as peer-reviewed or ‘grey’ literature. You will learn how to select research methods appropriate to answer your research questions and how to design a programme of research to achieve your project aims with the resources at your disposal. You will then gain knowledge and experience in applying specific research methods, for example laboratory practice or specific applications software for computer modelling. You will learn how to critically evaluate research results and how to draw specific conclusions against objectives set out at the start of the project. You will then learn how to structure and write an appropriate technical output detailing your findings and how to consider various options for disseminating your findings to a wider audience, for example posters, conference papers, journal articles and client reports. Underlying all this you will learn to identify and manage health and safety risks, risks to the successful completion of the project and any ethical issues associated with your project.
In this module, you will learn about structural testing methods and how to validate the results of finite element applications software for structural analysis and design. You also will learn theory of finite element method, its extended application to the consideration of dynamic problems and behaviour of dynamic structural systems. This module provides a solid foundation in structural testing, computer modelling and the finite element method in particular.
You will develop your understanding of academic conventions in UK higher education aligned to your level of study, including expectations around critical analysis, structure, argumentation, evidencing, and referencing. The module focuses on developing communication strategies that will help you express your ideas clearly and coherently in written assignments and spoken activities. You will also reflect on your current academic and language skills and develop strategies for development ahead of your assessments.
Standard Offer 112 UCAS Tariff Points
From a combination of acceptable Level 3 qualifications which may include: A-level, T Level, BTEC Diplomas/Extended Diplomas, Scottish and Irish Highers, Access to HE Diplomas, or the International Baccalaureate.
Find out how many points your qualifications are worth by using the UCAS Tariff calculator: www.ucas.com/ucas/tariff-calculator
Contextual Admissions 96 UCAS Tariff points
Northumbria University is committed to supporting all individuals to achieve their ambitions and we understand that every applicant’s circumstances can be different, which is why we take a flexible approach and assess your individual circumstances and potential when reviewing your application.
To find out more, review our Northumbria Entry Requirement Essential Information page for further details www.northumbria.ac.uk/entryrequirementsinfo
Subject Requirements:
Applicants will need A Level Mathematics and an A Level in another analytical science subject - Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Physics or Technology.
GCSE Requirements:
Applicants will need Maths, Statistics, or Physics and English Language at minimum grade 4/C, or equivalents.
International Qualifications:
We welcome applicants with a range of qualifications which may not match those shown above.
If you have qualifications from outside the UK, find out what you need by visiting www.northumbria.ac.uk/yourcountry
English Language Requirements:
International applicants should have a minimum overall IELTS (Academic) score of 6.0 with 5.5 in each component (or an approved equivalent*).
*The university accepts a large number of UK and International Qualifications in place of IELTS. You can find details of acceptable tests and the required grades in our English Language section: www.northumbria.ac.uk/englishqualifications
The UK tuition fee for 26/27 is £9,790 and is set in line with the UG Government's tuition fee cap. The University may increase this fee in subsequent years in line with any changes to the tuition fee cap. Students will be notified of any increase ahead of it taking effect.
The remaining fees relate to the International Soccer Academy and accommodation fees. Accommodation fees may increase in subsequent years. Students will be notified of any increase ahead of the re-issuing of tenancy agreements.
Tuition fees in the academic year 2027/28* will be £10,050. Fees are set in line with the UK Government's tuition fee cap. The University may increase fees in subsequent years in line with any changes to the tuition fee cap. Increases will be linked to inflation. For example, increases may be linked to RPIX (Retail Price Index excluding mortgage interest payments) Students will be notified of any increase ahead of it taking effect. Student fee loans rise in line with the tuition fees cap.
*if your course is longer than one year
* Fees subject to annual increases over the course of the period of study. Students will be liable for payment of any/all tuition fees which are not sponsored by their employer or other third party.
This is the tuition fee for your first year of study. You should expect to pay tuition fees for every year of study. The University may increase fees in the second and subsequent years of your course at our discretion in line with any inflationary or other uplift. Students will be notified of any increase ahead of it taking effect.
Tuition fees in the academic year 2027/28* will be £10,050. Fees are set in line with the UK Government's tuition fee cap. The University may increase fees in subsequent years in line with any changes to the tuition fee cap. Increases will be linked to inflation. For example, increases may be linked to RPIX (Retail Price Index excluding mortgage interest payments) Students will be notified of any increase ahead of it taking effect. Student fee loans rise in line with the tuition fees cap.
This is the programme fee for your first year of study. The programme fee includes the international tuition fee, International Soccer Academy and accommodation fees. Accommodation fees may increase in subsequent years. Students will be notified of any increase ahead of the re-issuing of tenancy agreements.
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To start your application, simply select the month you would like to start your course.
Engineering at Northumbria is ranked 25th for research power in the UK out of 89 submissions (REF, 2021), with teaching informed by active research in structures, geotechnics, and environmental engineering.
At Northumbria, every undergraduate course guarantees real-world experience, ensuring you graduate with the practical skills and professional confidence that employers across the civil engineering sector value.
Accredited by the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM), this degree fully meets the academic requirements for Incorporated Engineer (IEng) status, providing a recognised, professionally valued qualification from day one.
Northumbria's specialist engineering laboratories, including facilities for structures, soil mechanics, hydraulics, and highway materials, give you hands-on access to the equipment and techniques used in real civil engineering practice.
An Industrial Advisory Board of regional civil engineering companies shapes the curriculum, keeping your studies aligned with industry priorities and connecting you with industry partners and the wider professional network.
This carousel contains 5 slides. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate.
Engineering at Northumbria is ranked 25th for research power in the UK out of 89 submissions (REF, 2021), with teaching informed by active research in structures, geotechnics, and environmental engineering.
At Northumbria, every undergraduate course guarantees real-world experience, ensuring you graduate with the practical skills and professional confidence that employers across the civil engineering sector value.
Accredited by the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM), this degree fully meets the academic requirements for Incorporated Engineer (IEng) status, providing a recognised, professionally valued qualification from day one.
Northumbria's specialist engineering laboratories, including facilities for structures, soil mechanics, hydraulics, and highway materials, give you hands-on access to the equipment and techniques used in real civil engineering practice.
An Industrial Advisory Board of regional civil engineering companies shapes the curriculum, keeping your studies aligned with industry priorities and connecting you with industry partners and the wider professional network.
Our Applicant Services team will be happy to help. They can be contacted on 0191 406 0901.
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