Civil Engineering Communication Skills

Technical skills are mandatory and it is only one of the skills that a civil engineer needs to possess in order to succeed. Many think that communication skill simply mean the ability to speak English fluently. This is only one part of the communication skill that is needed. You may think it is all about reading and writing emails and other communications in English.?Yes, that is also equally important. However, it is not just limited to that. There are numerous technically sound engineers are not succeeding due to lack of these skills. You need to think beyond reading, writing and speaking. You need to be a sharp focused engineer if you have to do extremely well. Given that technical competence is the same for two engineers, the main differentiator could possibly be this skill.?

Reading, Writing & Speaking Skills

Direct communication is very important. Most of this being in English, your command over the language needs to be really good. Some are able to speak really well, but are extremely poor at conveying something and vice versa. There is not any shortcut for improving this. If English is not your native language, practice. You should be able to write and convey a doubt to your boss if you are a beginner and a very decent email to your team and a client if you have to one day become a team leader. Same is the case with speaking. The local language is also something equally important. Sometimes, the nature of your work demands you to know a local language. For example, the staff at the site understand only the local language. What they need to build, they need to know that effective communication is possible only through the local language.