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What's your typical work day as an engineer?

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  • 13-06-2014 10:46am
    #1
    Octotron
    Registered Users Posts: 19 ✭


    I'm doing the LC at the moment and I'm hoping to study Engineering. I've heard and read so much about it, but I can rarely find what the day-to-day tasks exactly ARE in an 'Engineering' job. I know the disciplines are very different but I'd just love to know specifically what YOU do on a typical work day.

    Thanks!


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    #2
    miss no stars
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,957 ✭✭✭miss no stars


    I work as a consulting Structural Engineer. Consulting basically means I spend more time in an office doing design work than I do on site making sure things are built the way they should be and fixing problems as they come up.

    Design:
    Most days I spend doing a lot of design. Not design like the way it should look (architect's job), but design like figuring out how to make the building stand up or how to knock down a wall without bringing the whole building down. In a nutshell, that means working out how much different parts of the building weigh so I can work out which size beam to use, how much reinforcement to put in concrete, how to connect up all the different parts of the building so that the whole building brings vertical loads (its own weight, the weight of stuff in it, people in it, snow etc.) and horizontal loads (wind, mostly) to the ground the way I've designed it to.

    Drawing:
    Once design is done and I've figured out which structural elements (beams, columns, foundations, slabs) are going where, I have to communicate what's to go where to the architect, builder and client so drawings need to be produced. Sometimes it's literally just a hand sketched diagram showing how to connect something, but a lot of the time it's getting into autocad and marking up everything on a proper drawing. Once the drawings are done, someone else double-checks my calculations and drawings (mistakes can have real consequences!) and I might make a minor change to the drawing and it then gets issued to everyone who needs to have it.

    Site:
    You can't do a design, hear nothing more, then issue a certificate to say it was built properly unless you're fairly certain that the building was built the way you designed it. So at important stages (trenches dug for foundations, rebar all set out and ready for concrete pour, steel on site and fixed before it's boxed in with plasterboard) and often just for a routine meeting, I go to site to make sure that everything's been done correctly. If there are any problems raised we work out solutions, but sometimes you have to go back to the office and do a bit of re-designing to make sure the new solution works.

    Report writing:
    Exactly what it says on the tin, might be about a house that someone wants to buy, might be about something that went wrong on a site that needs a report done.

    Paperwork:
    Even small jobs now need a substantial paper-trail so there's a bit of box checking and "I" dotting to be done.


    That's pretty much it.


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    #3
    Frogeye
    Registered Users Posts: 364 ✭✭Frogeye


    I'm a project manager in an engineering company. my day is spent hounding people to get stuff done. I have conversations like the one below all day...just substitute "boss" for "wife" and "the deliverable" for money...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTPCcirPNBo


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    #4
    spideog7
    Registered Users Posts: 1,230 ✭✭✭spideog7


    Octotron wrote: »
    I'm doing the LC at the moment and I'm hoping to study Engineering. I've heard and read so much about it, but I can rarely find what the day-to-day tasks exactly ARE in an 'Engineering' job. I know the disciplines are very different but I'd just love to know specifically what YOU do on a typical work day.

    Thanks!

    'Engineering' is just too broad of a term. What are you interested in? Software, Electronics, Power, Mechanical, Civil, Medical, Industrial Control, Process Control, Materials, Chemical, Petroleum, Agriculture etc. It's along list and the day to day work of an Engineer in any two of these fields might be as different as a Postman and a Doctor! Along with different disciplines there are various fields within each discipline that are very different (research, design, test, production, support, maintenance etc).

    Personally I'm an Electrical Design Engineer and I work for a Product Development consultant. I've spent the past week trying to find a bug in a design I did about 6 months ago. During the design phase I met with our client to determine their requirements, documented what they wanted and evaluated and presented a half dozen different approaches to achieve what they wanted at the price they wanted. I worked with our Industrial Designers to identify the best button placement, button strength, LED placement, LED colour etc all to ensure the best user experience.

    Once we settled on an approach I designed the circuit schematics and selected appropriate components to balance performance and cost. After that I did a PCB layout and worked closely with our mechanical engineers to fit that into the plastic housing in the limited space available to us. Once I shipped the first board prototype out to be fabricated I started writing the microcontroller software to make it do all the stuff it was supposed to do.

    We used an existing communication protocol but all the commands and flags were unique to this application. I designed and documented that interface so our client's engineers working on higher level parts of the design could reference it and figure out how to tell our part what to do.

    Once the first revision boards came in I populated all of the components, programmed the micro with my code and designed a test structure so I could run it through its paces even though we didn't have access to the system it would eventually be installed in. Then we basically started the process from the start again; changing, optimising and honing the design to fix any bugs or include any improvements. Once our phase of the project is finished we ship out all of our design files and all of our development documentation. Often we never see the design or the final product again (literally!).

    On that particular project, 6 months later after our client started testing it in their system, here we are back running it through its paces trying to find a bug that's hitting at random in about 30% of these.

    That's the whole process for just one project, but my week is usually split between 2 or 3 projects all at different development phases. I do most of this from my desk or the lab bench or somewhere in a tangle of wires in between the two! Occasionally I'll be on site with our client to run tests or do critical upgrades.


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    #5
    DenisOakley
    Registered Users Posts: 16 ✭DenisOakley


    I used to be a systems engineer on the railways.

    Day to day work very much involved looking at the specification and working out whether our designs met it, the requirements of other standards and then trying to find solutions to where everything didn't fit together.

    As a result I ended up doing a lot of work that isn't considered to be 'engineering' and spent months in Brussels and London arguing about how new harmonised engineering standards should be applied to the UK railway. And that was really interesting as different countries have different engineering approaches. They are common sense if you are inside them and totally arbitary and whimsical if outside.


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    #6
    BlackEdelweiss
    Registered Users Posts: 1,529 ✭✭✭BlackEdelweiss


    I'm a consultant fire engineer and I spend my days annoying architects!


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    #7
    lg123
    Registered Users Posts: 1,039 ✭✭✭lg123


    BlackEdelweiss wrote: »
    I'm a consultant fire engineer and I spend my days annoying architects!

    don't worry, they give it back to the rest of us.


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    #8
    super_sweeney
    Registered Users Posts: 223 ✭✭super_sweeney


    Engineering is very broad i have worked in two aspects of it to date:

    Manufacturing engineer: Where i was responsible for setting up production lines ensure all ops were trained up and machine ran as often as possible. this also included sourcing new machines and hardware for new projects, going through design specs for them ensuring they were fit for purpose and commissioning them when they came on site. but generally everyday could vary from packing the parts myself into a box during proto/ early development when we had no ops and shipping parts myself, to if needed running the machines yourself for a few days to understand how they worked working out the little knooks and craneys in them that if something went wrong you knew where to look.

    I have also worked in Semi-conductor as

    System install Engineer: Installing machines, qualifying them i.e calibrating them to our internal specs and then also what ever customer specs they had. ensuring all tools were present.

    Customer support Engineer: Fixing the machines when they break down, doing any investigations for product issues that the customer may have.

    being an engineer you do a lot of non-related engineering things and depending on the company you may end up even doing an "engineering job" that someone who is not qualified for could do.

    does this help?


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    #9
    BlackEdelweiss
    Registered Users Posts: 1,529 ✭✭✭BlackEdelweiss


    lg123 wrote: »
    don't worry, they give it back to the rest of us.

    Sorry about that. Its hard not to take a bit of enjoyment out of it though.


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    #10
    fizzypish
    Registered Users Posts: 1,000 ✭✭✭fizzypish


    Started a new job. Qualified about 2 years. Due to holidays, a temporary lack of projects and my general inexperience, my days generally consist of boards and listening to newstalk. I also have been looking at web design when I tire of boards. This has nothing to do with my job.....


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    #11
    mandrake04
    Registered Users Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭mandrake04


    I work as a field service engineer mostly in Nuclear medicine and Diagnostics or other diagnostic equipment and robots. I cover mainly Sydney & NSW but also help out interstate and Christmas Island and do a bit of work on the odd occasion in Paupa New Guinea.

    My day consists of either driving or flying to hospitals and clinics and basically f**king around with cool stuff, mostly fixing sometimes installing but I do about 25 different products so no 2 days are the same.

    A lot of time is spent standing around waiting for sh!t to happen or waiting around in Airports, driving etc, otherwise flat out like a lizard drinking.

    Sometimes due to the downtime or distance I work outside of business hours, I book all my own travel and accommodation and we have a team planner which is flexible and I plan my own work. Usually a couple of Preventive Maintenance days per week and a couple of free days to attend breakdowns.

    Sometimes I do a country run where I take a week of visiting sites in different towns for 6 month PMs, either drive or fly and hire a car.

    1 week in 5 I am office based and I give phone support and palm off jobs to other Engineers, I also organise parts or tools to be sent to customers for the other engineers or talk operators to replace parts themselves.

    Sometime I book workshop days stuffing around in the workshop or paperwork days entering my cases and doing expenses.

    Training is mostly Japan, Germany and USA. I also am a PES for a few products and have trained Engineers in other affiliates like India, Thailand etc.

    Here is a bit of a sample what I do.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu85ae3TpvY


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