Career spotlight Grade 12 Careers & CTE

Civil Engineer in Water Infrastructure: A Grade 12 Career Profile

A grade 12 career spotlight on civil engineers who design water infrastructure, covering the degree-to-license path, daily tasks, and sector-wide workforce demand.

Grade: Grade 12
Subject: Careers & CTE
Material: Career spotlight
Time: 35 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

D2.Eco.1.9-12 C3 Framework

Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.

How this material aligns: Discussion question 3 asks students to compare the incentive structures of the operator path and the engineering path, weighing the costs and benefits each path offers to different students, matching this indicator's focus.

All materials for D2.Eco.1.9-12 →

D2.Eco.2.9-12 C3 Framework

Use marginal benefits and marginal costs to construct an argument for or against an approach or solution to an economic issue.

How this material aligns: Discussion question 5 asks students to weigh the near-term cost of a four-year engineering degree against the marginal benefit of entering a field with rising retirements, applying this indicator's marginal-reasoning approach.

All materials for D2.Eco.2.9-12 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-15.

Objectives

Students will describe the daily engineering tasks and licensing path required to become a civil engineer working on water infrastructure.
Students will compare the education and licensure requirements of a water-sector engineering career to those of an on-the-job-trained operator career.
Students will explain how sector-wide workforce retirements create demand for both new engineers and new operators.

Vocabulary

Asset management: The practice of keeping track of everything a utility owns, like pipes and pumps, and planning the smartest times to fix or replace each one. It helps spend repair money wisely.
Condition assessment: A checkup for pipes and equipment. Utilities inspect and test their systems to learn what is close to failing and what can safely wait a while longer.
Capital improvement plan: A utility's long-term to-do list of big construction projects, such as replacing old pipes or building new tanks. It shows what will be built, when, and how it will be paid for.

Teacher overview

A civil engineer working in water infrastructure plans and designs the pipes, pump stations, tanks, and treatment facilities that a community's water system depends on, work that sits behind almost every visible part of the system. This profile follows a typical week of engineering work, explains the college-to-license pathway into the role, and places that path alongside the on-the-job operator path so students weighing their own options after high school can compare both routes honestly. A four-year engineering degree is one legitimate route into the water sector among several, alongside operator licensure, certificate programs, and graduate study.

Civil Engineer in Water Infrastructure: A Grade 12 Career Profile — Grade 12 Careers & CTE

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Career Profile

A typical week: Much of a water-infrastructure engineer's work is planning for pipes nobody can see. An engineer runs hydraulic models of a distribution network. The models show how water moves through the system under different demand conditions. The same engineer reviews condition-assessment data, the record of how worn each pipe is, to prioritize which aging mains should be replaced first. The engineer also drafts the technical drawings. Those drawings specify exactly how a replacement pipe or pump station should be built. During construction season, engineers spend time in the field as well, inspecting work as it happens. The point of that inspection is to confirm that what gets buried matches the approved drawings. Because ratepayers ultimately pay for water infrastructure projects, engineers also spend real time estimating costs for a capital improvement plan and explaining trade-offs to utility managers and elected officials.

Getting licensed: The path into this role starts with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from an ABET-accredited program. Students who already know they want the water sector often add electives in hydraulics, hydrology, or water resources. After graduating, most take the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. Next comes a period of years working under the supervision of a licensed Professional Engineer. Those years build the hands-on design experience that state licensing boards require. Engineers then sit for the Professional Engineer, or PE, exam. A PE license is what legally allows an engineer to stamp and approve designs for public infrastructure. Internships with a utility or an engineering firm during college are the most common door into a first engineering job in this field.

Workforce demand: Roughly one-third of the entire water sector's workforce becomes retirement-eligible within the next decade. Young workers are scarce: in 2016, Brookings found that only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger, compared with 12.5 percent of all U.S. workers. That wave of retirements reaches engineering staff as well as plant staff. As experienced engineers retire, fewer senior engineers remain to mentor newcomers into the profession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics separately projects about 10,000 annual openings for water and wastewater treatment operators. That figure describes operators only. It does not include engineering positions, because operators and engineers are tracked as separate occupations. Even so, the same sector-wide retirement pattern is part of why engineering firms and utilities are both actively recruiting new engineering talent.

Student Handout

Discussion questions:

Name two specific tasks a water-infrastructure civil engineer performs in a typical week, based on the Career Profile.
Describe, in order, the steps a student would follow to become a licensed Professional Engineer working in water infrastructure.
The operator path runs from a high school diploma to on-the-job training to a state license exam. The engineering path runs from a four-year degree to the FE exam to supervised experience to the PE exam. Compare the two paths, and name one advantage of each.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 10,000 annual openings for water and wastewater operators, a figure specific to operators. Both fields face a similar retirement wave. Even so, explain why this number does not tell us anything directly about how many engineering openings exist.
Roughly one-third of the water sector's workforce becomes retirement-eligible within the next decade. Explain why a student weighing either the operator path or the engineering path might see this as good timing for a career decision.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: Any two of: running hydraulic models of the distribution network, reviewing condition-assessment data to prioritize aging-main replacement, drafting technical drawings for replacements, inspecting construction in the field, or estimating costs and explaining trade-offs for a capital improvement plan.
Answer: Earn a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from an ABET-accredited program, pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam, work for a period of years under a licensed Professional Engineer gaining supervised design experience, then pass the Professional Engineer (PE) exam.
Answer: Accept any reasonable comparison. A strong example: the operator path lets a student begin earning income and gaining plant experience immediately after high school without taking on a four-year degree, while the engineering path takes longer and costs more up front but leads to broader design authority and the legal ability to approve public infrastructure plans through a PE license.
Answer: Because the 10,000 figure comes from Bureau of Labor Statistics data specific to the water and wastewater operator occupational category, which does not include civil engineers; engineers are tracked and projected under a separate occupational category, so an operator-specific figure cannot describe engineering demand.
Answer: Accept any reasoning that connects the retirement statistic to opportunity, such as noting that as experienced staff across the sector retire, openings are likely to increase in both operator and engineering roles, which could mean less competition and more active recruiting for a student entering either path in the coming years.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide a simple side-by-side chart comparing the operator path and the engineering path step by step (diploma versus degree, on-the-job training versus FE exam, state exam versus PE exam), and allow discussion question 3 to be answered as a short list rather than full sentences.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to research, using only the pathway described in this profile rather than outside sources, what kind of coursework or student organization at a college of engineering might best prepare someone specifically interested in water infrastructure, and to justify their answer using details from the Career Profile.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "capital improvement plan," "condition assessment," and "Professional Engineer" with simple definitions and a labeled diagram showing the degree-to-license pathway as a sequence of boxes. Allow discussion questions 1 and 2 to be answered with short phrases rather than full sentences.