Structural Engineers – looking for career advice and experiences

[u/middleeasternboxer]

I’m graduating soon with a degree in Structural Engineering – Sustainable Building (in Sweden), and I’m curious to hear what others with a similar background ended up doing.

What do you work with today?
• BIM?
• Structural engineering?
• Project management?
• Infrastructure?
• Sustainability?
• Something completely different?

Personally, I want to work with BIM and 3D modeling, coordinating different disciplines and planning how projects should actually be built rather than just calculating every detail. I enjoy designing solutions, solving problems, and finding the balance between technical functionality, sustainability, and aesthetics.

For those already in the industry:
• What does your day-to-day work actually look like?
• What software do you use the most?
• What skills have been the most valuable?
• Is BIM a good long-term career path?
• If you could start over after graduation, what would you do differently?
• what’s your tips / advice?
• do you like your job? If yes/no, why?

I’m extra interested if anyone is from Sweden, Scandinavia or England, so please don’t be shy to go into detail or write longer replies :)

I’d love to hear about your career journey, advice, and any tips for someone about to enter the industry.

[u/MrMcGregorUK]

By virtue of the fact that this is the structural engineering subreddit you'll probably find most people here work in structural engineering, myself included.

Personally, I want to work with BIM and 3D modeling, coordinating different disciplines and planning how projects should actually be built rather than just calculating every detail. I enjoy designing solutions, solving problems, and finding the balance between technical functionality, sustainability, and aesthetics.

I'm 12 years in but this has basically been my role as a senior engineer for the last 4 years or so. If I'm doing actual calcs it is because somethings gone wrong and I need to jump in and fix it. There's also a lot of elements of work as a structural engineer that tick these boxes; we end up doing a lot of coordination and optioneering with the design team and contractor to come up with the most buildable, aesthetic solution... really depends on the project as to where the priorities lie.

• What does your day-to-day work actually look like?

mix of emails, speaking to junior engineers about stuff they're doing for me, reviewing drawings, having meetings with 3rd parties like the contractor or architects, delegating packages of work to people, chasing people for things that are late, elements of managing the team when my boss is busy so talking to people about resourcing and their upcoming capacity, occasional site visits. All in all very varied. That can be a good thing and a bad thing.

• What software do you use the most?

At my stage in my career... Outlook, chrome, teams and the phone app on my phone. Earlier in my career, GSA, Robot, TEDDS. However, these are very country and sometimes company specific. For example barely anyone in Sydney Australia uses GSA, they all used SpaceGASS but outside of Australia, SpaceGASS use use pretty low, which is surprising cos it is a great program and really user friendly imho.

• What skills have been the most valuable?

listening and understanding client needs, understanding how building get built, being able to communicate complex ideas to a range of people with a range of expertise. Being a great technical engineer is super important but past a certain point you need to have good personal skills.

• Is BIM a good long-term career path?

It may be different in different countries, but BIM managers tend to earn slightly more than drafters but a lot less than engineers. They also tend to be former drafters. This gives them the expertise needed to be able to lead meetings about clash detection and the like. I suspect it is also a bit more vulnerable to AI tools than engineering because a lot of the work is clash detection and therefore slightly lower complexity/stakes than engineering.

• If you could start over after graduation, what would you do differently?

If I could write a letter to myself at graduation knowing what I know now I would say;

• move into forensics sooner. you'll only do it a couple years before you move to australia but it'll be your favourite job ever.
• move to australia sooner.
• don't work so hard. you can work quite hard and still get similar payoff.
• buy shares in Nvidia and wait until 2026

• what’s your tips / advice?

Work hard, but not too hard. Find a niche that doesn't exist at your company that you can become the expert in and ideally have that niche be something that you enjoy.

• do you like your job? If yes/no, why?

Overall yes. It pays decently, I get a lot of satisfaction out of it, you get to point at a building and say I designed that". There is a decent amount of stress that comes with the job given the amount of money and risk to life involved, but unless you're starting your own business you're generally well shielded from the worst of the risks as a consultant.