[EpicEng]

A civil engineer is responsible for every tolerance, specification, and design they put their name on. I imagine they would be verifying those before they sign off. She also has to have a lot of knowledge in math and certain sciences to do that job I'd consider that engineering.

[dcole2929]

This is a late reply but basically, you're completely wrong. There are certain aspects that someone on site has to be sign off on, but no the majority of engineers on site don't have to be responsible for really anything other than verifying they delivered what they promised. There are inspections (generally by the state) that verify the safety of a finished project. If something goes wrong because of sub par material or a design from an architect that ended up not being sound that's not on the engineer who signed off. And as far as Math and Science skills it's actually pretty similar to CS people where you learn a lot of stuff that you never use, or are expected to. Some guy did a basic derivative for something or other on their site, a week back, and everyone freaked out they were so impressed. These aren't the day laborers. There are all guys who've been in construction for years, Superintendents, field and project engineers, etc.