In recent years Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of Civil Engineering Structures has attracted considerable attention. SHM for Civil Engineering applications can be defined as "the process of acquiring and analyzing data from on-site sensors to evaluate the health of a structure." The suite of on-site sensors could include any presently installed sensors and new sensors to be installed in the future. The development of SHM technologies for Civil Engineering Structures is an activity that spans multiple engineering disciplines. It is also recognized that many stakeholders, like owners of infrastructure, regulatory agencies, designers, contractors, academia, and equipment suppliers are crucial to the process of certifying viable SHM solutions. Significant advances have been made in the theory related to the "health" of structures, and the present engineering applications of SHM are very encouraging and promising. However, a large number of methods and techniques have been proposed and applied to different structures, with different levels of success. This large variety of approaches makes it difficult to compare and contrast the merits of the various methodologies. And at the present time it is not possible to determine with certainty what methods and techniques are the most suitable for monitoring large structures like bridges, buildings and dams. This has also caused significant level of confusion to the owners and operators of infrastructure as it is not clear to them what SHM entails and what should be their realistic expectations when a structural health monitoring program is implemented. As a consequence the use of SHM for large structures has not become as prevalent as it had been expected when the concept was developed a few decades ago. This presentation will provide a general overview of the various monitoring methodologies that are of practical applicability to Civil Engineering Structures and will provide provoking thoughts of what the academic and research community should do to encourage owners and operators of Civil Engineering structures to take full advantage of this technology to monitor and protect their assets. The need for guidance on the definition, development and certification of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technologies for Civil Engineering health management applications will be discussed as well.