Career paths in HVAC

Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum

Help Support Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

HITMANVQ35

Active member
Joined
Oct 8, 2008
Messages
38
Reaction score
0
Which career paths would you choose and why? Also if you currently hold one of the positions, which one and if you could list the pros and cons even if they may be subjective

I'll go first

Job: Building Automation Service Specialist

Pros Control concepts are interesting, get to travel to job sites and not stuck in cubicle all day, hands on work, physically and mentally stimulating

Cons May have to work in un-ideal environment at times, higher risk of getting injured due to my negligence or someone else's at job sites,

Just for clarification Service specialists are who troubleshoots and tunes up the initial job the Systems Specialists installed.

Come on people, let's hear it!!

 
my uncle went back to school for HVAC, worked in that field for like 9 months then went back to his construction job becasue he wasn't able to make the same kind of $.

 
Job: Consulting (military, government and education)

Pros:

- Decent pay

- Pretty easy

- flexible hours

- steady work

Cons:

- Not very challenging

- Stuck in a cube all day

- Someone ate my yogurt

- HVAC consulting seems to be going away, for more design/build stuff.

 
Job: Consulting (military, government and education)
Pros:

- Decent pay

- Pretty easy

- flexible hours

- steady work

Cons:

- Not very challenging

- Stuck in a cube all day

- Someone ate my yogurt

- HVAC consulting seems to be going away, for more design/build stuff.

I am in HVAC consulting as well. We do churches, office bldg, school, basically whatever comes through the door. I have to disagree with your statment that it is not challenging. Not even considering design, just making sure that we have smoke detectors where TDOH wants them or seismic restraints when they are needed and any number of other CODE requirements keeps me on my toes. Design can get monotonuos when you do plain vanilla stuff, but we get the occasional geothermal job or chiller job that challenges me, at least. Yes being chained to the chair sucks but i get out often enough that i dont complain (too much).

PS. it does suck when someone eats my yogurt!!!!

 
I know of a few self made rich guys who have done it with HVAC, seems like even very large projects can be tackled by a relatively small firm making some good profits. From what I know they started in residential retro fits to industrial repair and upgrades into industrial new installations.

 
I'm in facilities management for a city. for the most part I do commissioning (both design and construction); project management of HVAC projects, energy studies / simulations, and design (and whatever no one else wants to do :)

Pros:

- variety and you see things from beginning to end (my design mistakes will haunt maintenance, and they will haunt me, unlike consultants who disappear later and never hear how their design works out on the long run)

- I get a lot in the trenches with maintenance and contractors, which really helps in design.

- We keep buildings for a long time, so I have good justification to spend more money for longer benefit (unlike private sector where the building gets sold or leased anyway and the original owner only looks for low cost)

- you learn a lot how a city and all departments function

con:

- politics... it hurts my heart to see how money is wasted to get a worse design (from an engineering point of view) just for political reasons.

- lazy people don't get dumped as they should, no one gets held responsible for mistakes

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I work for an equipment manufacturer (not one of the options above. . .) I design unitary equipment, so I spend my days doing thermodynamics (refrigeration system design) and airflow analysis.

Pros: stable job, challenging work, flexible office, easy balance between work and home

Cons: stagnant pay(decent salary, but raises are small), corporate bs, working late at night with overseas suppliers & engineers (this can be a plus since it helps with the flexibility part)

 
I work in consulting now but I worked at a mechanical contracting company before. The job at the mechanical contracting company included having me work in the feild for a year. Pretty rough but I now have experience most consultants don't have.

Now as a consulting engineer in South Dakota we have to do everything that comes through the door so I can go from a hotel, to a lab, to an office building.

Pros: Stable job, challenging work, plenty of opprotunities to get out of the office

Cons: work is cyclical with weather, drop in economy has dropped amount of work.

 
I work in energy services consulting. With HVAC being a major part of energy consumption with most facilities, it has significant emphasis in our field. The job is pretty easy and is very cyclical.

Pros: stable job, lots of field work, flexible hours

cons: work is cyclical, corporate politics, a lot of people who see the "engineer = b*tch" mentality

 
Back
Top