Process Control Engineer

Yes. But why on earth would you want to do such a thing?

Whats wrong with a Managerial Position. How long one can stay as an Engineer. Not for the rest of my life atleast. The Managerial role I meant is within the same industry.

My apologies. If what you want to do is be a manager, then by all means, go for it!

But let me ask you this in return: What is wrong with being an Engineer for the rest of your life? You make it sound like a bad thing. It may not pay as much as a managerial position, and it may not be as "glamorous". But for myself at least, I consider it an honorable, rewarding profession. Money isn't the end-all-be-all in my career decision.

Engineers make a real, tangible difference in this world - every day. And personally, I get a big kick out of playing with the worlds biggest erector sets!

Buddy, I believe being a Manager doesnt make you less an Engineer. That is why I mentioned 'in a Process Plant or a Refinery' not a Retail Chain. I believe once an Engineer always and Engineer. I will clarify a bit more or will put my question the other way.

' What are the growth prospects for a Process Control Engineer? Can they become Managers in a Process Plant? '

This is a discussion from experiences. Engineering will always be an exciting profession and Engineering Managers are also Engineers by profession arent they?

Simple answer - Yes. You could very easily end up as senior manager heading Instruments and Control or even maintenance or Engineering Manager etc if that is what you wanted.

If you want to be the Managing Director of a refinery for example you will at some stage have to move into operations management. I have met Md's of chemical/refinery/process plants that have come from all forms of engineering and other disciplines, mechanical, electrical, instrument, control, chemist, chemical engineer and even a General Practitioner who after qualifying got a chemistry degree.

However, in the industry that you mention, the very top managers tend to mostly come from the Chemical Engineering discipline. This is because moving from the technology side of the business to operations is a pretty natural progression, but there is nothing stopping you from doing the same. It is all based on how much effort you are willing to put into it and you own abilities. It will, for sure, be harder coming from a discipline such as yours.

One of the places that I have worked (refinery), the Managing Director. the Engineering Manager and the Project Manager were all heavy current Electrical Engineers. Where I am now it is a Civil Engineer - so all is possible.

What's wrong of being an engineer for the rest of your life... This means that youre not growing or rather contended of being an engineer or no ambission, just my point of view, but me I would like to become a manager someday, not an engineer for the rest of my life.

You are a very sad many dvmddsc - very sad.

Hi

I work in the refining industry most of our plant managers were chemical or mechanical engineers.I would rather work for them than a control engineer

Consider the following sentence:

"If the prospect does not have skills to develop a management position,
will be seeking help here. "

On a scale of 0 to 5, may be at five in his current position, but may fail for management.

For a chance of promotion is necessary to prepare all staff for the next position.

Regards

At your service.

In refineries there are mostly mechanical and electrical equipments hence manager is supposed to know the equipments he is going to control. If plant is big there can be the manager who may head the Process Control Dept. If you wish to jump fast then you should change your job and join Process Control mfg unit.Where top man could be PCE.

You might expect managers to be able to know the equipment used by the people he is managing. But I've had managers who were barely PC literate, let alone knew which way to turn a screw.

Yes, any engineer can be a manager. There are a few managers who might be able to do engineering. But they are fewer in number.

Indeed they can, in fact, in my opinion they have a good foundation of knowledge and it is a logical career progression. It is unfortunate though that only a small percentage of control-types make it to the managerial level. I have my thoughts as to why, but let's take this in a certain order.

If your aspirations are to progress into management, then I highly suggest pursuing an MBA. For those of us that work, have worked, in the trenches, we know that there are more important qualifications than a piece of paper... but, when working as an engineer in any field, we all know that our degree taught us the basics but mostly was to fill our Apprentice Tool Box with critical thinking, root cause analysis, problem solving techniques, and the skills is math and science to think and design in a world of physical science. But, none of us graduated with a detailed skill set for any specialization... that is developed over time as you work in your industry. That experience is what fills your Journeyman Tool Box.

Management, on the other hand, is not a physical science and our tool boxes are filled with different tools as compared to engineers. Most effective managers worked their way up the food chain within the industry they are managing. They have already filled their Technical Journeyman Tool Box, but as soon as they decide they want to transition into management, that tool box becomes a Managerial Apprentice Tool Box and you need to start filling it again. Start by pursuing your MBA.

The benefits of an MBA are far reaching. First and foremost it presents a perception to your senior managers that you are willing to take a significant portion of your personal time and invest it into your career progression. Where a BS degree for an Engineer is the beginning, an MBA for a manager is more near the end of their tool set development.

While working on your MBA during your personal time, there are other things that should be addressed during your work time. Take a good look at your desk/office/cubical and even your car. Are they organized? Are they Disney World clean? Does everything have a place and is it in it? If not, start making those changes. Managers are both intuitive/forward thinkers that see the holistic picture and are no longer immersed in the details. Good ones are also highly skilled at resource and time management... if your work space is cluttered and disorganized you are not presenting application of this required skill set. If your organizational skills are visually lacking to others when all you have to worry about are your own tasks, how can you expect them to think it will change when you become responsible for 5 to 10 other people's tasks in addition to your own?

Also, one final general suggestion before getting into why I think Control-types make excellent mangers... if you want to progress into management in the future, start acting like one now. As crazy and superficial as this may sound, it has a big impact... take your general appearance to the next level... if you are currently wearing jeans, change to Dockers, if you are currently wearing polo's, change to button-up shirts. Never go a day without shaving. Check your exaggerated emotional response at the door, there is never a good time for an exaggerated response to any situation. Increase the professional appearance of every document/report/spreadsheet you generate. Come in a little earlier than normal, stay a little later than normal, take a slightly shorter lunch than normal. Use this extra time to start developing rapport with your peers and others that work at your facility. Over the two years it will take you to get your MBA, you should know everyone that works at your facility and they should know you. Look at it like this, as a controls engineer you need to know the capabilities of various components to insure they complement each other and work together as a system. As a manager you need to know the capabilities of your human resources to ensure they complement each other and work together as a team. For any person that desires to obtain that next position in their career, the key to remember is you have to be proactive and start doing it on your own. You'll probably notice that most of your peers that get promoted were already kind of doing the job before it became officially theirs.

So, as for Control Engineers... I think they have a valuable knowledge pool of the facility... they have a detailed understanding of process interaction, how different systems in the facility coexist and work together. They may not know why two chemicals are getting mixed together the way they are, they may not know how the isolation transformer works, they may not know why one air circuit has an oiler and another doesn't... but they do now how the whole thing is controlled, how it operates, it sequences, it's redundancies, its dependencies. As a controls engineer you have the skill set, resources, and access to completely understand how your entire facility operates at the machinery level. A manager does the same thing but at a personnel level.

Anyway, this is getting longer than I wanted it to, but... your key question regarding growth potential can best be summarized as... anyone, doing any job in any facility, in any industry is only limited by their desire and skill set. My thoughts as to why the percentage of control-types is smaller in management is because most control types either don't desire to leave or can't leave the realm of detailed logic and transition to the word of holistic non-logic. And I don't mean non-logic in a negative way, just look at it like this... unless your facility is staffed with nothing but Vulcans, then your managers have to deal with non-logical situations all the time that often times do not have a clear black and white answer.

I know I kind of went above and beyond your initial question, sorry about that.

JavaHead