Advice on potential career change into HVAC/Energy Engineering

[KMenges]

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

 

[cdxx139]

If this is what you want to do, just get a job doing it. You have an engineering background and are experienced with pumping systems, so you can be useful at the get go. When you get into a firm, then you can take seminars, and classes on their dime. Your current employer probably wont pay for it.

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

 

[ScottyUK]

Have you considered something like Performance Engineering for (e.g) the power industry? There is reasonable overlap with your interests, and if you enjoy (??) thermo then it could be a good match. It is certainly a niche market where good performance guys are sought after and rarely unemployed.

 

[urgross]

Starting point for energy/HVAC is getting a CEM (in the USA) which is a fairly easy, one day test and costs $300.

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.

 

[KMenges]

Thanks for the feedback all. My research into the potential positions I liked also showed the CEM was a big plus for employers, seems like a good way to boost my value without much HVAC design experience. The local travel part is also enticing. My career has always involved about 30% travel but it always starts at an airport. There does seem to be a fair bit of overlap with my current activities in pump system analysis/engineering economics, site work, etc so maybe its not a full on career change but more a shift. Regardless it's a difficult decision to make, especially uninformed so thanks again for the posts and the perspective.

 

[CarolinaPE]

I switched about 12 years ago from a product design background to HVAC. My employer at the time had a knack for sending engineers to China for a month at the start of college football season. In general the HVAC or energy will be closer to home, they can send you around the country if they run low on work. This can be limited too as HVAC can be pretty regional, strategies used in the southeast for example may not fly elsewhere in the country and vice versa. It really all depends on what you want to do, you could get your feet wet and see if you like HVAC or the energy side. Volunteer a few hours a week at a firm and see if you like it. I have also done the energy side in the form of building audits and find them not as fun as actually engineering systems for a building.