I’m Jason Firth.
Since 2006, I’ve been involved with many different parts of the trade and profession of instrumentation, control, and automation. I started off by getting my diploma in Instrumentation Engineering Technology from Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. My first job, I worked as part of an engineering team designing new control systems; I continued on to support maintenance and planning initiatives like Reliability Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis; and for the past few years I’ve been a member of a maintenance team, improving a plant and helping support new installations or modifications to existing systems while resolving issues that come up during day-to-day operation.
This field feels like fulfilling a childhood dream to me. When I was growing up, I’d watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I always thought the engineering staff were the heroes of the show. Whenever there was a problem that simply couldn’t be solved, the techies would come up with some innovation that would save the day. Today, I get the privilege of feeling the same way. I get to find the problems that nobody else can find, solve the problems nobody else can solve, and apply the knowledge of instrumentation, automation, and control to make the world safer, more productive, easier, and even more fun.Today, I’ve become both a Certified Engineering Technologist in Manitoba and Ontario, and a Red Seal Journeyman instrumentation and controls technician. I’m particularly proud of my red seal, and the trade skills that I’ve mastered that it represents.
With this blog, I have a few goals: I’m hoping to get some of that information together so control professionals from all over can use it. I’m hoping to take some of the extremely cryptic academic work out there and simplify it for industry. I’m hoping to help spread the word about journeyman instrument techs and certified engineering technologists, and the value that control professionals can bring to organizations.
Thanks for reading!