Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering
Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering
(OP)
Hello all, I'm exploring a potential career change from my current field into the HVAC design/Energy analysis world and would appreciate any input from those of that already work in or have worked in this field. What type of job do you have? What kind of daily activities or "engineering" are you doing? Do you travel or are you always in an office? Honestly anything you want to share is much appreciated. My background is in rotating equipment/reliability and pumping systems and I do have my PE (Thermal Fluids) but before I invest a ton of time and effort into training or certification I'd like to get some real feedback from other engineers on their experiences. Thanks again in advance





RE: Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering
Your in the office for the most part, and get out of the office maybe twice a week, for a meeting or site visit etc. I switched from the power side to HVAC, and what i liked about it was I was working on local jobs that I would drive by sometimes, instead of power plants in China.
knowledge is power
RE: Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering
RE: Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering
HVAC and energy engineering go hand-in-glove, but you do need to be good at engineering economics, and it helps to be a good writer, and have knowledge of the GAP and UCC for private sector and CAS and FAR for public sector.
I spend about half my time in the field and half my time in the office. All the travel is local, which is a large part of why I accepted the job. I enjoy the hands-on, or at least until I hit 60 (when I get too old and have "OVERHEAD" tattooed on my forehead), and half the time is in mechanical rooms or in central plants. Since I don't have to do rainmaker glad handing, a lot of time is spent on TAB activities, thermal load analysis, controls, engineering economics (life cycle cost analysis, ROI, IROR, etc.) and measurement and verification protocols.
It's what I studied for and specialzied for undergraduate degree in the 80's (when I thought solar and fracking would take off), worked for an energy consulting firm for a short time, then spent 20 years doing mech design for laboratory and medical facilities. Been doing the energy engineering job for about 7 years now, sure beats the last job working in a biological weapons receiver lab filled with both of the nasty a-letter words.
RE: Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering
RE: Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering