Would building trades be useful in Civil engineering?

Both courses will be useful but you will get all of these at university anyway.

My daughter has a PhD in civil engineering specializing in transportation and works on setting transportation infrastructure policy for the US federal government. She took road construction as part of her masters degree and yes, she often has to write scripts in Excel to get stuff done and is now learning a language called Python do she can process the data she has to go through. That is why I say both are important.

Computer science but at school it's normally way to easy so it doesn't matter to much. Just make sure your doing well in maths and physics.

Just an update: I highly recommend learning coding threw a 3rd party if you want to really get ahead.

I am a civil engineer and knowledge of the trades is a necessity. Nothing makes an engineer look foolish like having the contractors telling you your design isnt practical. Also construction engineers primary purpose is to understand and coordinate with the builders. You cant do that if you have never seen how stuff is actually built. Take the trade class. Computer wise i would focus only on drafting software and excel. Especially for a construction engineer excel is your best friend.

As a side note civil engineering never requires computer coding or programming.

my son just became one, and the computers skills were a huge plus, but you may be able to do them via the web and use the live classes for hands-on building skills.