SSC JE Civil Engineering Syllabus

Civil is the largest branch in SSC JE by applicant numbers and by vacancy count. The same syllabus serves both papers, which means 400 of the 500 merit marks come out of the topic list below.

Where the branch paper sits

Paper	Questions	Marks	Negative marking
Paper 1, General Engineering	100	100	0.25
Paper 2, General Engineering	100	300	1 mark

Paper 1 leans towards recall and short calculation. Paper 2 goes deeper with more numerical work.

SSC JE Civil Engineering syllabus, topic wise

Building materials

Physical and chemical properties, classification, standard tests, uses and manufacture of building stones, silicate based materials, Portland cement, asbestos products, timber and wood based products, laminates, bituminous materials, paints and varnishes.

Estimating, costing and valuation

Estimates, analysis of rates, methods and units of measurement. Items of work covering earthwork, brickwork, RCC work, shuttering, timber work, painting, flooring and plastering. Boundary walls, brick buildings, water tanks and septic tanks. Bar bending schedule, centre line method, mid-section formula, trapezoidal formula and Simpson’s rule. Valuation covering value and cost, scrap value, salvage value, sinking fund, depreciation, obsolescence and methods of valuation.

Surveying

Principles of surveying, measurement of distance, chain surveying, prismatic compass and compass traversing, bearings, local attraction, plane table surveying, theodolite traversing, levelling, contouring, curvature and refraction corrections, temporary and permanent adjustments of the dumpy level, tachometric survey, curve setting and earthwork calculation.

Soil mechanics

Origin of soil, phase diagram, void ratio, porosity, degree of saturation, water content, specific gravity, unit weights and density index. Grain size distribution, index properties, Atterberg limits and soil classification. Permeability, effective stress, quick sand, consolidation, shear strength through direct shear, vane shear and triaxial tests, soil compaction, earth pressure theories and bearing capacity including the plate load test and the standard penetration test.

Hydraulics

Fluid properties, hydrostatics, measurement of flow, Bernoulli’s theorem and its applications, flow through pipes, flow in open channels, weirs, flumes, spillways, pumps and turbines.

Irrigation engineering

Necessity and effects of irrigation, types and methods of irrigation, hydrology covering rainfall measurement, run off, evaporation and infiltration. Water requirement of crops, duty, delta and base period, command area and irrigation efficiencies. Canals and canal lining, wells and yield, weirs and barrages, Kennedy’s theory, Lacey’s theory, floods and flood control, waterlogging and land reclamation, plus major irrigation projects in India.

Transportation engineering

Highway engineering covering cross sectional elements, geometric design, pavement types and materials, flexible and rigid pavement design, WBM and WMM, bituminous construction, joints, maintenance and drainage. Railway engineering covering sleepers, ballast, fixtures and fastenings, track geometry, points and crossings, stations and yards. Traffic engineering covering surveys, speed flow density relationships, intersections, signals, signs and road safety.

Environmental engineering

Quality and sources of water, purification and distribution, sanitation and sewerage systems, sewer appurtenances and sewage treatment, surface water drainage, solid waste management, air pollution and noise pollution with their causes, effects and control.

Theory of structures

Elasticity constants, determinate and indeterminate beams, bending moment and shear force diagrams for simply supported, cantilever and overhanging beams. Moment of area and moment of inertia, bending and shear stress for tee, channel and compound sections, chimneys, dams and retaining walls, eccentric loads, slope and deflection, columns and critical load, plus torsion of circular sections.

Concrete technology

Properties and uses of concrete, cement and aggregates, water quality, water cement ratio, workability, mix design, storage, batching, mixing, placement, compaction, finishing and curing, quality control, hot and cold weather concreting, plus repair and maintenance.

RCC design

Flexural, shear and bond strength of RCC beams. Singly and doubly reinforced beams, cantilever beams, T-beams, lintels, one way and two way slabs, isolated footings, reinforced brickwork, columns, staircases, retaining walls and water tanks. Questions may be set on both limit state and working stress methods.

Steel design

Design and construction of steel columns, beams, roof trusses and plate girders.

How to prepare the branch paper

Work from previous years’ papers by topic. SSC repeats question types heavily, and the standard numerical set attached to each topic is small enough to learn properly rather than approximately.

Estimating and costing, surveying and soil mechanics between them account for a large share of the paper in most years, and they are also the topics where formula recall matters most. Secure those before moving to design.

Keep a formula sheet you revise weekly. On a paper that deducts a full mark per error in Paper 2, the difference between remembering a formula and half-remembering it is the difference between plus three and minus one.