PLC/SCADA "Controls" Engineer - where is this job/field going?

[digitalcaptive]

Hi,

I posted this in the wrong area before...maybe, this is a better forum for the question.

I am a "Controls" Engineer from Canada, currently working in the nuclear industry designing "tools" for nuclear maintenance.

I am wondering about the market for someone with my skill set: PLC/SCADA/Electrical system design....

With manufacturing dying in Canada/North America, where will the jobs be? Some other countries? Nuclear is a great sector to be in for now, but for how long? And given that I'm just an "electrical" guy and not a nuclear guy, I feel that I'm pretty expendable (in reality, everyone is).

So where do I go from here? Should I go back to school and get training in something else? MBA? Law? Physiotherapy? Advanced Engineering degree? Herd goats?

I mean I like my job, only because it's fairly easy money, but it's not a passion, and I am worried about the future.

I have been working for four years now, and feel like I'm at a fork in the road and need to make a decision whether to continue on in this career or move on to something else...

Any thoughts would be appreciated...

 

[nickelkid]

Life is too short to be doing something you do not like.

 

[ctopher]

Nuclear will pick up soon, electric/battery areas for auto's will be popular.
Anything environmental will probably be safe.
I used to program PLC's 20 years ago. A lot of it is now outsourced, computer automated, or replaced by CAD/CAM & robots.

Chris
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[controlnovice]

PLC/DCS integration will not be moved overseas. It may be outsourced, but the main 'theory' behind the design will come from the plant (or head office) design.

Plants will still require PLC/Scada work for maintenance. PLC/DCS requires intiment knowledge about the process and this is difficult to outsource (and get good results).

Electrical design...hmmm. Again, plants will require electrical maintenance/reliability engineering, but they could outsource this quite easily. It's not tied to process knowledge and just about anyone with electrical background could walk into any plant and produce.

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[digitalcaptive]

I used to work for a system integrator, they were in a number of different sectors from automotive, to food and pharma...they were always growing then contracting, and I felt like a salaried "contractor" with them.

Now I work for a "Nuclear Engineering" company, and we "outsource" a lot of our "conventional" work to integrators like the one I used to work for.

So I've been on both sides of the industry in that respect, client and customer.

Now I'm at a point where I just don't know where this is heading towards. The older guys in the industry just seem to be doing what I'm doing..still designing and programming systems...it's become boring.

These guys make decent money, but it doesn't seem like the job is getting any more "exciting" or "involved". And, it's really not that "challenging", it's really just basic logic and configuration. I think I could have done this work out of high school..

The most challenging part of the job is just staying focused. Feel like I've lost interest and trying to figure out ways to get back into it...

 

[MisterT1982]

I'm about at the same point in my career. I've been out of school for over 3 years now and work as a controls engineer for an automotive manufacturing plant.

While it can be fun working on big machines, after a while it's the same things - add a prox switch here, change an HMI screen there, or sequence a machine differently. The biggest challenge is fighting with management to get down time on a piece of equipment.

I also wonder what type of work might be more challenging/interesting. I'd like to stick with electrical engineering and have been considering embedded systems design & programming. Any other bored controls engineers?

 

[digitalcaptive]

I just hate engineering. Everyday I go into work, I think of blowing my brains out.

 

[digitalcaptive]

Well, not literally...but how do people do this for 40 years?!?

 

[code1]

40 years of engineering, or 40 years of Controls/PLC/SCADA/Electrical system design?

 

[digitalcaptive]

40 years of engineering...

sitting at a desk

working in a plant

or what have, just "engineering"