Graduation design is the final work in the undergraduate teaching process of civil engineering. It is a systematic inspection and application of students’ undergraduate learning knowledge including theoretical knowledge and professional expertise. Graduation design is a systematic and comprehensive training link for cultivating students’ engineering application ability and scientific research and innovation ability, and it is more to reflect the comprehensive ability of undergraduate students in solving complex engineering problems. The existing undergraduate graduation design for civil engineering majors is mainly engineering design, focusing on cultivating students’ engineering practice ability, but neglecting the cultivation of scientific research and innovation ability, which is not conducive to the comprehensive and all-round development of civil engineering graduates. This paper takes the graduation design of civil engineering major of Lanzhou University of Technology as an example, through a questionnaire survey, analyzes the existing problems in the process of graduation design of civil engineering major, and explores the civil engineering undergraduate design model that combines scientific research and innovation with engineering practice, to provide a reference for the civil engineering graduate design teaching in similar universities.