BJUT entered the list of over a hundred key universities sponsored under the "Project 211" in 1996, becoming the only Beijing municipal universities to be designated a “Project 211” key university. In 2017 BJUT was selected for the construction projects for national “First-class Discipline”. BJUT endeavors to pursue the establishment of world-class universities and disciplines. The number and level of its discipline units are among the highest in local universities nationwide, covering 8 discipline fields: engineering, science, economics, management, literature, law, education and arts.

Guided by the idea of “concentrating on priorities, striving for the best, developing scientifically, and optimizing structure”, BJUT seizes the opportunity of constructing “Double First-Class” universities. With the standard of building first-class disciplines, BJUT considers talent cultivation as the basic principle, focuses on developing high-level personnel, adopts the measure of building national platforms and teams, deepens systematic and mechanism reform, in order to realize the internationalization of disciplinary development and talent cultivation. BJUT also takes full advantage of the characteristics of its disciplines, highlights construction, and forms the discipline ecosystem with “first-class engineering, competitive science, distinctive arts and management, excellent art”. BJUT now has 20 authorized units for Doctoral Degree of first-level disciplines and 33 authorized units for Master’s Degree of first-level disciplines. It boasts 18 postdoctoral research programs and 11 categories of right to confer professional Masters Degrees, of which Masters of engineering includes 17 fields. Meanwhile, BJUT has 3 national key disciplines, 3 key construction inter-disciplines of Beijing, and 39 key disciplines of Beijing.

BJUT has achieved remarkable results in discipline construction. On the basis of the development needs of Beijing and BJUT’s focus on urban construction, pollution management, environmental improvement and traffic congestion alleviation, BJUT strives for developing “modern urban construction and environmental engineering” as a first-class discipline. With Civil Engineering as its leading discipline, it focuses on environment and traffic engineering, and develops advanced materials within the new generation of information technology, in order to lead and drive the enhancement of the school’s whole discipline level.

BJUT’s Civil Engineering program has entered the list of “Double First-Class” disciplines, rated A in the fourth round of discipline evaluation conducted by the Ministry of Education, its environmental science and engineering was rated as grade A-, and seven disciplines such as computer science and technology were rated as grade B+. Four disciplines including mechanical engineering, material science and engineering, control science and engineering, optical engineering were included among advanced disciplines of Beijing universities. In the Best Chinese Subjects Ranking 2019 released by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, the discipline construction of BJUT performed excellently. Among 33 first-level disciplines, 14 are among the top 25 percent in China, growing 40 percent compared to the 10 disciplines in 2017. In QS World University Rankings by Subject, the discipline number of BJUT among the world’s top 500 disciplines increased from 6 to 8. Its civil engineering, material science and engineering, and several other disciplines are among the top 250 in the world. BJUT’s disciplines included in the top 1 percent disciplines of Essential Science Indicators (ESI) grew from 3 to 5.