Electrical Services

[Snoogans]

I'm a recently graduated electrical engineer, I've been working at a small building services consulting company for about 5 months. Recently the head electrical engineer left, leaving me with much much more responsibilty in terms of design and documentation.

Unfortunately, during my university education we learnt nothing with regard lighting design which is major component of my job. Does anybody here have any reccomendations for resources I could use to teach myself about this area of engineering, especially lighting but general electrical services resources are also necessary.

Thanks for any help you can offer

 

[davidbeach]

You've got a far bigger problem than lighting design. Without a PE to sign the drawings, you would be practicing engineering without a license, and that can lead to fines and other civil penalties.

 

[Snoogans]

We are currently looking for a board registered engineer, but as I live in Australia, we are in a bad but somewhat enviable position. There aren't enough skilled workers for most of the trades, and as a result finding someone to hire has been proving difficult.

I am not sure of the laws here with regard to this so if any Australian, particularly queensland engineers can point towards some information on the laws about prcticing engineering, it would be much appreciated.

Regardless, I would still like to learn to do my job with some confidence.

 

[rbulsara]

Besides the legal issues, as for lighiting, in the beginning you will need to rely on some good lighting vendors/their sales reps. They should be able to help you select and layout lights for the right application and even perform the lighting calculaitons.

The for your benefit, refer to IES lighting hand book and reference book. But it is not something you will learn in a few days.

As mentioned before, just 5 months of experience is not going to cut it. I do not see this as your problem, you may use this as opportunity to step up the plate but there will be more pitfalls that you don't even know. So differ much of your initial issues to the Owner of the firm.

 

[candu6]

If your firm does a lot of lighting design, then you should have a copy of the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) handbook. Many of the lighting manufacturers have small workbooks that you can use for simple designs.