{"id":44,"date":"2011-05-05T12:40:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T20:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/"},"modified":"2011-06-17T07:53:31","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T15:53:31","slug":"industrial-controls","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/profiles\/industrial-controls\/","title":{"rendered":"Industrial Controls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Name:<\/strong> Arthur Gooch, EIT\"\"<\/p>\n

Job Title: <\/strong>Project Engineer<\/p>\n

Company:<\/strong> Universal Dynamics<\/p>\n

Industry:<\/strong> Mining, Pulp & Paper, Petrochemical<\/p>\n

What I Do<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

I am an industrial controls consultant. My projects require a broad skillset, including control strategy design, electrical instrumentation and power distribution design, control system programming, and project management.<\/p>\n

A Day in the Life<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

When I’m not visiting a customer’s site, I work a 40 hour week in the office. While the time I spend there is very flexible, there are great benefits from keeping reasonably traditional hours so I can draw on the experience of the more senior engineers. My projects are generally one-off capital projects for a wide variety of customers: either plant upgrades and optimizations or control systems for new facilities.<\/p>\n

When I am on-site, I’ll work up to 80 hours a week, depending on how tight the schedule is and how exciting the nearby tourist activities are.<\/p>\n

Why My Job Is Great<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

My work lets me experience a wide variety of challenges, both in the types of projects I work on and the customers I do them for. It is impossible to become bored when faced with learning the intricacies of new industries, processes, and facilities on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

The Downside<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Each project usually requires a certain amount of time spent at the customer’s facility. Depending on the project, this time on the road can be very significant and places large demands on my personal life. Even so, I’d never give up the travel as I’ve seen a lot of places that I never would have had the opportunity to visit otherwise.<\/p>\n

Off the Job<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

When I’m not working, I race on a J\/24 sailboat, play in the Vancouver Field Hockey League, and snowboard whenever I can. The overtime I work when I’m on the road goes into my vacation pool, allowing for frequent long weekends or sudden days off when the snow is good.<\/p>\n

Experiences to Learn From<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Having a group member who doesn’t pull his or her weight is a problem that will never go away. While such individuals quickly get weeded out from my company, we constantly collaborate with people who may be slow, unhelpful, and sometimes inaccurate. Learning how to step beyond frustration, deal with these people in a diplomatic fashion, and compensate for their shortcomings will ensure the success of the project.<\/p>\n

The Best Part<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

My work is largely electrical in nature. That said, my mechanical background gives me the foundation to analyze a system and determine how it needs to behave. Frequently, industrial automation engineers have electrical or computer science backgrounds. While they are very skilled at implementing their designs, their understanding of what the physical system is actually doing is frequently limited in comparison to a mechanical’s.<\/p>\n

M<\/strong>y Advice to You<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Mechanical engineering is a solid foundation that can be applied to almost any physical system. That said, broadening your background with electrical and computer courses expands your employability dramatically. It is hard to find an interesting mechanical system that doesn’t have an electrical component and, even if your electrical background is only used to communicate with your electrical colleagues, it will be a huge asset.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Name: Arthur Gooch, EIT Job Title: Project Engineer Company: Universal Dynamics Industry: Mining, Pulp & Paper, Petrochemical What I Do I am an industrial controls consultant. My projects require a broad skillset, including control strategy design, electrical instrumentation and power … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7137,"featured_media":0,"parent":9,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-44","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44\/revisions\/479"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thinkmecheng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}