Can an engineer do anything other than design and build things?

not really true in my experience. there are test engineers who test things other people make,. and engineers who write the tests to test stuff. engineers who create technical specifications of what to buy (lots of govt engineers do this) engineers who approve things that contractors build, engineers who do 2nd level technical support, engineers who fly around to solve difficult problems with equipment, engineers who create/approve modifications to existing things.

Most engineers are real people. So we can do other things. We can cook meals, we can reproduce, we can even find an interest in politics and economics! There are alot of things engineers can do. But anyway, the role of an engineer is to design, analyze, simulate, prototype, test, and build products. One can do all these things or just any one of them in a typical job. Some also support customer's technical questions, manage industry and business for that industry, and pretty much any other roles in that type of company.

Many engineers go on to manage other engineers. They are taught good organizational skills, time management. Good at organizing projects and using cost estimating heuristics. Other engineers go into sales departments. In some countries, engineers go into politics, too.

Engineers are also used widely at diagnosing and fixing problems. For example, Exxon Mobile hires chemical enginees as a lot of their sales people, so that they can tell the customer exactly what is happening in thier situation.

Check out this website. It's the job outlook handbook for 2008-09. It also tells you what kind of types of engineers there are! I hope it helps.. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm

Engineers do consulting with companies which is like design. Engineers don't get their hands dirty so they don't really build things they just overlook the projects. Engineers also go into fields of medicine, law, academics, research and development, pharmaceutics, and more.

yeah, they can do alot of things/ replace people in other fields. They can teach. do anything with math involved, blue collar work, white collar, a wide variety of things. My favorite thing to do as an engineer is sit by my pool and swim through my money.