Materials testing involve complex reference methods and several soil tests have been used for indexing material functional attributes for civil engineering applications. However, conventional laboratory methods are expensive, slow and often imprecise. The potential of soil diffuse reflectance near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for the rapid estimation of selected key engineering soil properties is investigated using soil samples from across the Lake Victoria basin of Kenya. The results suggest that NIR Partial Least Square (PLS) has potential for the rapid estimation of several key soil properties. Agricultural engineers and extension officers, Research officers in National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) and soil scientists interested in soil engineering properties.