In the context of globalization in the recent years, Vietnam has been integrating further and further into the world’s socio-economy. The field of civil engineering, evidently, is under the influence of such process, which presents both opportunities as well as challenges to young civil engineers. In order to provide civil engineering students with the necessary knowledge in the more open labour market, some universities have implemented higher English requirements in their curriculum. For instance, at the National University of Civil Engineering, a specialized civil engineering training program in English was designed. The program has been constantly supplying the market with quality civil engineers who possess good professional knowledge, as well as proficient English capability.

In order to properly follow such syllabus whereby all technical subjects are taught in English, students ought to:

•           possess necessary technical vocabularies regarding the general knowledge of

buildings;

•           understand basic concepts in the civil engineering major; as well as

•           be able to interpret the means to present civil engineering designs (i.e. drawings

and reports).

Thus the purpose of this book: Fundamentals of Building Design and Construction. For the sake of easy reference, the book is divided into two volumes. In this first volume, there are to be five chapters covering the following contents:

Chapter 1 introduces the procedures of a civil engineering project from its proposal stage, through the design and construction, and into its operation and maintenance stage; each stage is presented with important stakeholders, description of processes involved, as well as documents and/or drawings produced.

Chapter 2 focuses on the first activity of any construction sequence - earthwork and site preparation; the chapter comprises of a brief explanation of key items during a soil investigation, earthwork tasks, and machineries employed for earthwork.

Chapter 3 contains general information of building system and building design (loading, and structural analysis procedure); together with an introduction to the foundation system and the substructure system (types of structure, summary of popular construction methods).

Chapter 4 moves on to the superstructure of a building, and introduces one of the two conventional structural systems - Reinforced Concrete (RC) structure: RC structural members are explained in details together with different types of drawings to present their designs; two methods of constructing RC structures (Cast-in-Place, and Precast) are also mentioned in this chapter.

The last chapter of this book - Chapter 5 - deals with several other miscellanous topics in Civil Engineering including: Health & Safety in the Construction Industry, Transportation Engineering, and Construction Project Management. The chapter is formated ỉn short articles, briefly introducing important concepts in said topics.