Het Gezelschap "Practische Studie"

"Het Gezelschap Practische Studie", PS in short, is the Dutch student society for civil engineering students at the TU Delft. The society was founded on February 13, 1894. PS represents all students from freshmen to senior and organizes a wide range of activities.

As a society, PS is the direct link between students and the faculty and between students and civil engineering companies. To fulfill this task, PS is lead each year by a board of seven members, who lead the society fulltime and take a break from their study for a year. Besides the board, the society runs on committees. About a hundred people participate in these committees every year.

PS evaluates the education at the faculty, organizes activities and publishes documents. A short description of these activities is given on the pages next to this one.

Activities

PS organises a range of different activities, both study related and just for fun. A summary of the most important activities is given in this leaflet.

Education-evaluation

From first-years to senior students, every year has it’s own educational committee. These committees evaluate lecture periods en discuss these evaluations with the teachers or the director of education. Other than that PS has a chair in different counsels. The society has a large influence through these counsels. Individual complaints are also dealt with at PS.

Publications

PS offers a couple of educations, starting with our own society magazine, the ExtraCT. We also publish a yearbook each year and we publish accounts of different study trips. To offer students information about different civil engineering related companies we also publish the Civiel Profiel.

Students can see the theory being put into practice at the different excursions that PS organizes. This can be at the first-years excursion, organized to show first-years some real-life Civil Engineering, or at the PS Business Tour, at which senior students can visit some civil engineering companies. Of course there are also some excursions to civil engineering projects that every civil-engineer-to-be has to have seen. International students can join such trips, but they have to subscribe early because the organisation have to change the language into English.

Visiting these projects, PS is not limited by the Dutch border. PS has a couple of committees which organize trips going abroad (both within Europe as outside Europe). During these trips several civil engineering sites are visited. The trips are not expensive and very useful for your study.Every year, PS hosts the civil engineering company day at which about forty civil engineering companies present themselves to the students. Students can learn about job opportunities and inform about internships and graduation possibilities.

Preliminary to the company day, the Civiel Profiel is published. The Civiel Profiel holds descriptions of companies. Also, a couple of companies hold lectures about civil engineering marvels.

PS also organizes workshops, lectures and discussions about recent developments in the civil engineering world throughout the year. Well-known examples are the workshop about fraud at Dutch building companies, a lecture about the tsunami a couple of years ago and the flood of New Orleans.

Het Gezelschap “Practische Studie” also organizes symposia about different civil engineering subjects. During a day lectures are given and open discussions are held.

Every Thursday afternoon, an informal party is held at civil engineering cafe PSOR at the faculty. Students and faculty staff come together to enjoy a couple of drinks.

Apart from these Thursday afternoons, civil engineering students can do lots of other fun stuff besides their study. PS organizes a range of fun related activities throughout the year.

A couple of examples are a daytrip to Brussel, ice-skating, movies, cabaret, a ball, a soccer tournament and a darts trophy. Of course the fun at the study-related activities such as trips abroad and the PS Business Tour should not be forgotten. PS also organizes a coupe of parties with different theme’s at different occasions.

Het Gezelschap “Practische Studie” is the study society for civil engineering students at the TU Delft. Even so, people don’t always grasp the full meaning of the term ‘Civil Engineering’. The back of this leaflet is therefore reserved to explain what civil engineering means.

Shortly, civil engineering at the TU Delft has four different areas of expertise; building, water, transport and geosciences.

‘Building’ is mainly about construction. For example bridges, but also building construction can be part of this area of expertise. Other subjects are building physics and organization of building sites.

‘Water’ is all about altering the landscape in order to improve the circumstances for the people living there, for example the Dutch deltawerken and building levies. Also, research is done on storing and clearing water in order to make it drinkable. Examples of this are irrigational systems and water-purifying plants.

The third area of expertise is ‘Transport’. Civil engineers design the shape and construction of roads, railroads, airports and stations. Research is done on an optimal use of the current infra-structural network.

‘ Geosciences’ is the knowledge of the ground below us and how to use it properly to build on. Examples are tunneling, engineering different kinds of foundations and the consequences of building on different types of soil.