A week in the life of an MSc Civil Engineering student
From face-to-face sessions with acclaimed experts and laboratory-based practicals to the use of online digital tools and captured learning material, discover what a typical week looks like as an MSc Civil Engineering student at Surrey.

How you'll learn
Our well-established and fully accredited Civil Engineering MSc will equip you with exceptional analytical and technical skills across a range of industry-related disciplines.
Fully aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, our MSc puts emphasis on sustainability and resilience-based infrastructure design and assessment.
You’ll learn through a combination of:
- Lectures
- Tutorials and seminars
- Practical workshops and laboratory sessions
- Keynote talks from VIP industry professionals
- Online captured content and lecture notes
- Digital study tools.
Outside of these, you’ll be expected to carry out independent study and learning, including working on self-study questions, guided background reading, coursework assignments and your dissertation project.
A typical week
Each week will typically have 8-10 contact hours, which can be a combination of any of the sessions shown below, depending on your module choices each semester.
Monday
- 10am-12pm: Structural Mechanics and Finite Elements – Seminar
- 3pm-6pm: Water Treatment – Lecture
Tuesday
- 10am-12pm: Prestressed Concrete Bridge Design – Tutorial
- 3pm-4pm: Wastewater Treatment – Lecture
- 4pm-5pm: Wastewater Treatment – Tutorial
Wednesday
- 9am-11am: Steel Building Design – Seminar
Please note, Wednesday afternoons are left free for sporting and other University society activities.
Thursday
- 9am-11am: Durability of Bridges and Structures – Lecture
- 1pm-3pm: Infrastructure Financing – Seminar
- 3pm-5pm: Advanced Soil Mechanics – Seminar
Friday
- 12pm-2pm: Infrastructure Systems, Interdependencies and Resilience – Seminar
- 2pm-4pm: Energy Geotechnics – Seminar
Find out more about postgraduate study in our Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Disclaimer: The timetable and modules listed are indicative, reflecting the information available at the time of publication and may be subject to teaching availability, student demand and/or class size caps.