In the latest RAE 2008, Civil Engineering at Swansea was ranked second overall in the UK, with 95% of the submitted work rated as “world leading” or “internationally excellent”. The Civil & Computational Engineering Research Centre is acknowledged internationally as the leading UK centre for computational engineering research and many techniques currently in use in commercial simulation software have originated in Swansea. The Centre is housed in a modern purpose-built accommodation in the Talbot building and has excellent computing facilities which include state-of-the-art parallel computers with virtual reality facilities and high-speed networking.

In addition to offering an outstanding environment for research, the Centre provides several postgraduate research-training programmes, originating from the pioneering and internationally recognized MSc course in the Finite Element Methods developed by Professor Zienkiewicz in 1965. The courses have trained many generations of first class international researchers in the field and over the years have gained a significant international profile making Swansea one of the key international centres for research and training in computational mechanics and engineering.