The paper explores discourse markers, in particular conjunctions, nature and major types of relations between clauses and sentences of English civil engineering discourse in the light of current research in pragmatics. Various approaches to discourse markers are considered. These linguistic items play a significant role in constructing discourse coherence. They signal adjacency expectations triggering the processes of inferencing. The paper focuses on further possible interpretations of core types of relations signaled by markers-conjunctions in the context of their use in civil engineering discourse. Lines of thought are illustrated with examples. Discourse markers are a tool facilitating discourse comprehension. The research outcomes can be used in delivering courses and seminars on discourse analysis, pragmatics and academic writing at institutions of higher education. In the digital age with rapid development of IT the study results can be applied in the development of natural language processing software for discourse comprehension