A Winning Formula for Your Civil Engineering Dissertation – Proven Steps
Are you in a situation like “Can I do it?” Or it is not possible to do. If you struggle with this thinking before writing your civil engineering dissertation, you do not need to fret. This article will discuss a winning formula for your Civil Engineering dissertation writing with proven steps.
Civil Engineering is the field of executing and designing structures of bridges, canals, power plants, dams, aqueducts, sewerage systems, highways, bridges and other frameworks.
Importance of Civil Engineering
Wolfram Schmidt discusses the future of Civil Engineers in his book chapter. “Future Civil Engineering Challenges – Skill Requirements, New Professional Profiles and Implementation,” published in 2017 as:
Civil engineers use 70% of construction materials and have been controlling global growth and development for the upcoming decades, greatly impacting global climate, quality of life and wealth distribution. Civil Engineer plays a vital role in global challenges and holds a key for their solutions.
Civil Engineering is a programme of 4 years of curriculum activities. In these four years, students learn from basic civil engineering to the advanced level of professional skill and then implement these skills in designing structures and constructing projects in the last year of the degree.
G. J. Xiong represents a framework 4 years curriculum programme of Civil Engineering in his article “A CDIO CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT FOR THE PROGRAM OF CIVIL ENGINEERING” like:
Undoubtedly, Civil Engineering is a highly demanding field, but the education required to become a civil engineer seems to be relatively very tough for students. A lot of hard work is necessary to pass this degree.
Why Writing a Civil Engineering Dissertation is Arduous?
Writing a Civil Engineering dissertation is a long procedure that requires an extensive amount of time to conduct research for the implementation of a project and draw a fruitful conclusion. Students are facing many issues, from conducting research to collecting enough relevant data for a topic, lack of strong methodology, evaluating results and writing a well-structured dissertation.
Besides writing from scratch to create an impressive dissertation, students need civil engineering dissertation help online from a reliable dissertation writing service to save their time and effort. In this way, they can also pay full attention to their other tasks and projects. You can also consider the blow mentioned steps to write a perfect dissertation with minimum errors.
How to Write a Civil Engineering Dissertation?
Writing a dissertation is a prolonged and daunting task. There are some basic but highly important steps for writing a heart-winning dissertation. So, let’s begin with these 7 steps for your Civil Engineering dissertation.
1. Manage Your Time
Miss E. Alana James said in her Book “A Map for Writing Your Dissertation: Proven Methods for Finishing Faster,” published in 2013:
“Old adages, such as “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “Every journey starts with a single step,” bear on the daily grind of writing and rewriting, reading, developing new ideas, discussing, and then rewriting again—that is the process of dissertation or thesis development.”
Yes, it is difficult and irritating to start, stop and restart, but it will give you beneficial outcomes. So you have to manage your time to perform well such as:
- Work 30 minutes every day and do something innovative to move on.
- Connect with your adviser while setting a timeline.
- Divide your work into different tasks and then prioritise these tasks.
- Focus on which part of the dissertation has to be done first, which at the last with time.
Jan P. Hammond & Lester, in “Dos and Don’ts of Completing the Ed.D. Dissertation,” show a simple timetable with tasks and their timeline:
Make a timetable by dividing your task with time in rows and columns. When you start your task, tick that one and mention the time when you did it, in the “completed date” section.
2. Understand your Requirements for a Doctoral Dissertation
It is very important for you to first understand what you need to write a doctoral-level Civil Engineering dissertation. Miss E. Alana James emphasised to consider some points in your mind. As:
- Have you any ideas about your dissertation topic?
- Do you understand what basics you need for writing your dissertation?
Keep these questions in your mind and first prepare yourself mentally. After that, think about the topic and which type of topic you will choose to proceed with and create a mindmap around it. She represented all these key points in an infographic like this:
3. Choose Topic Carefully
Now, it is time to research and narrow down civil engineering dissertation topics wisely. You have to select your research topic carefully because the rest of your dissertation depends on your topic. Think about
- What is your field of interest in Civil Engineering?
- Have you access to all the resources to do complete research?
- Will you be sponsored for your research on that topic or not?
- Are you able to collect enough data after research?
- Can you be able to complete your dissertation on your topic before the deadline?
Your supervisor suggests many different topics, but you have to choose the one which follows all the above important considerations.
4. Do Proper Research
Conducting research is one of the most important steps you must take with full attention. Because your dissertation relies on your research, there are some steps you have to follow to do proper research:
- Find a topic
- General Research
- Narrow Down Your Research
- Identify a research problem
- Develop a research Question
- Focus on your study goal
- Consider Your Audience
- Collect Data
To collect your data, you can do surveys, experiments and in-depth observations. You can also use various means of data collection, like internet websites, Google Scholar, Google Books, encyclopaedia, and journal articles.
After collecting data from all these resources, the important thing is to analyse that which is relevant or irrelevant and exclude the irrelevant information.
5. Create a Flowchart and solid Outline
When you are done with completing your research, the thing is to make a mind map and effective outline. Your outline should start with an Introduction and end with a meaningful conclusion.
- Introduction
- Literature Review
- Research Approach
- Methodology
- Analyse data
- Final Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
Aileen Cater-Steel presented a process flowchart showing dissertation chapters in her article published in 2004.
This flowchart is a perfect map that you can use to make your Civil Engineering dissertation outline. It will keep your writing procedure on track, and you will explain each and every single detail about your topic to answer your research question.
6. Start Writing with the Main Body of the Dissertation.
The main body of your dissertation contains almost 4 chapters, including a literature review, research methodology, findings and discussion. According to the University of BATH, the body section includes:
Literature Review (30%)
Writing a literature review is the most important basic step to provide your reader with enough possible information about the previous work. It will also help you identify the research gap and raise your research question.
Methodology (15%)
The methodology section includes your methods and procedure for doing an experiment. You also have to mention the equipment, tools and instruments you used in doing your experiment.
Results: (20%)
The results chapter should be 20% of the whole length of a dissertation. In this chapter, explain all your findings and final outcomes after applying your methodology to solve the problem. Tell that what you have assessed at the end. You can make a table, infographics, or a flowchart to represent your results.
Discussion (20%)
This chapter involves all the discussion about your research. Explain the research gap limitation, and discuss your topic from a future perspective. In this way, you can suggest further research ideas for the next civil engineers.
7. Write Introduction & Conclusion
After writing your civil engineering dissertation’s main body section, write its introduction and conclusion.
Introduction
In the introduction, explain all the key points of your research topic. Always start with thesis statements to engage your readers and emphasise the importance of your dissertation topic. Additionally, briefly explain your study goal, research methodology, and results, and make a conclusion.
Conclusion
It is a summarised piece of information containing a short detail about all the important points of your research topic. So, in this chapter, end your dissertation with a perfect couple of concluding sentences.
8. Proofread and Edit
This is the post-writing step which helps you create a polished dissertation. In this step, read and re-read your dissertation from start to end to identify mistakes. You must check grammar and spelling mistakes and focus on the dissertation formatting.
Highlight all the mistakes and make some changes where required. Structure your Civil Engineering Dissertation according to your institute’s formatting guidelines and instructions.
Conclusion
Writing a Civil Engineering dissertation is a long, hard-to-manage and herculean task for students because it requires a lot of time and full dedication to producing a high-end dissertation with zero plagiarism. In these circumstances, students need a helping hand to write a civil engineering dissertation perfectly.
We have mentioned above eight proven steps to write an effective dissertation. But if you cannot understand these steps, then avail of a dissertation writing service from The Academic Papers UK to pass your civil engineering degree with high grades.