Controls or Commissioning ? I was formally in controls now in commissioning.
Yeah, I’ve started noticing the transition between careers. As a control guy, you’re stuck at the job site all day until your programming and graphics are complete. Then, you have to wait on tabs to fix more issues. Finally, commissioning comes around, and by then, you’re pulling all-nighters. Most controls guys we encounter the day before we start are exhausted. Lately, I’ve noticed that commissioning is much smoother compared to being a controls guy without a life. Siemens seems to be struggling to keep up with the projects they have, and JCI is never the best at having employees on site. TDI keeps trying to contract out control guys, but every single one I encounter is fresh in the industry and doesn’t know a thing. I also notice that they don’t pay control guys what they’re worth. This is a significant problem, and I’ve been saying it for a while. Control guys should be paid at a higher level, and this is a major issue that needs to be addressed. With commissioning, we show up with a list to go over, and most of the time, none of the controls guys are ready, and we either fail the systems or we try to push out what we need to do or can do. I will say commissioning is a way smoother career; however, travel is the only thing I know people don’t like doing. I travel Monday through Thursday, usually home on weekends, and writing up detail reports and basically being a site inspector, that’s pretty much it as a commissioning engineer.