Civil Engineers near you

The Engineering Council is the body that sets the standards for professional engineering competence and holds the register. It describes registration as independent assurance that an engineer or technician has demonstrated the competence, commitment and ethical practice required, and it maintains that the four registration titles are legally protected. Registrants show their status through the post-nominal letters.

Assessment is delegated. The Council licenses professional engineering institutions to assess individuals for professional registration and to recognise programmes of learning and development, and it advises candidates to join a licensed institution which can guide and support them towards registration. Forty-five institutions are licensed, covering the whole breadth of the profession, and the Institution of Civil Engineers appears on that list alongside the Institution of Structural Engineers.

For a homeowner, this means the useful question is not are you an engineer but what is your Engineering Council registration and which institution assessed you. Registration also carries a continuing professional development obligation, so it is current registration rather than a historic qualification that gives the assurance the Council describes.

GOV.UK guidance lists the circumstances for England. An assessment is needed where development is proposed in flood zones 2 or 3 as shown on the flood map for planning, including flood zone 3b, the functional floodplain; where the site is in flood zone 1 but is one hectare or larger; where the site falls within the flood zones plus climate change layer showing increased future risk from rivers or the sea; where the flood map shows a surface water risk in flood zone 1 now or in future; in an area with critical drainage problems, currently only in Devon and Cornwall; and where the vulnerability classification of the development increases and it may face flooding from other sources.

The guidance says you will usually need to pay a flood risk specialist to carry out an assessment for you, while allowing that applicants may complete simple, low-risk assessments themselves for developments such as house extensions. It also states plainly that your local planning authority may refuse your application if you do not include a flood risk assessment or if it is not satisfactory — which makes this one of the few pieces of engineering a householder pays for in order to get a decision rather than in order to build something.

These are English arrangements. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run separate planning systems with their own flood risk policy and their own mapping, so check the requirement with your own planning authority before commissioning anything.

Civil fees are driven by how much investigation the site needs before anything can be designed. A drainage strategy for a modest extension on level ground with known ground conditions is a short desk exercise; the same strategy on a sloping site with no records, a watercourse nearby and a surface water constraint is a different job entirely. The variables are the amount of site investigation, whether a topographical survey already exists, the number of consultees involved, whether a flood risk assessment is required and at what level of detail, and whether the appointment continues through construction. A fee that excludes responding to the authority's comments is rarely the bargain it appears to be.

LokalMatch does one thing: it puts you in touch. Describe the site problem once, add your postcode, and civil engineers working in your area respond to you directly. Homeowners pay nothing; professionals pay for the enquiries they receive. LokalMatch does not carry out engineering work, does not set fees and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone who gets in touch.