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Engineering Technology Industrial IT Management and supervision Process Control Trades

Work From Home does NOT mean Work 3 jobs.

During the pandemic, a certain practice ended up being written of in national media and became a topic of discussion, though I don’t know how prevalent it became in fact. This was the practice of working several jobs from home. In particular, I’ve heard about it quite a bit from IT people.

The individuals who took these jobs were accepting pay by the hour, but then would take several of these positions at once.

There are a number of rationalizations, including that as long as that job duties are getting done, It isn’t really your employer’s business whether you have another job during the same hours they are paying you for, the need for financial security, the lack of opportunities, the exploitation by employers, and the autonomy of workers.

I’ll say, in an age of high inflation, high cost of living, and relatively wages compared to productivity, I can relate. I understand why people would think that this is a just thing to do.

But here’s the thing: It’s not just, it’s not ethical, it’s not moral,it’s not legal. Don’t do it. (Don’t worry, I’ll tell you how you can do it ethically and morally and legally at the end)

The argument of “As long as job duties are getting done, it isn’t really your employers business whether you have another job” makes a lot of assumptions that aren’t necessarily valid. Just because you are getting paid at a job and you haven’t been fired yet does not mean you’re doing perfectly fine and everything is okay. Labor law makes certain assumptions about the employer employee relationship and as such a Grant’s additional protections that someone doing peace mill work wouldn’t have. It’s often very difficult to fire an underperforming worker, and so management will keep them on even though they’re not particularly happy with the job they’re doing. They may even tell the employee that everything is just fine. In that case, they’re not doing it because the employee is hitting all of his targets and everything is fine, they’re doing it because the cost and effort involved in trying to get rid of a bad employee is so high it’s easier to just deal with an underperforming team member. At that point, then you have that underperforming team member go off and work three other jobs because they are under the impression that they are a Superstar who hits all their targets. In reality, that worker is just taking advantage of both sides of the equation, working like a subcontractor well accepting the benefits of full-time employment and the protections therein.

When an employer is paying you for that hour, it is your employer’s business what you’re doing. The moment that you accept payment for that hour of your time, it is no longer your time, it’s their time to do with as they will within reason.

One can make the argument for financial security, but I don’t really feel like that’s an ethical argument as much as a practical one. Of course we all want to make more money, and if there’s a way to make more money then you’re making more money, but that isn’t a moral or ethical argument. Robbing old people is another way you could make more money and be more financially secure, but most people would agree that robbing old people isn’t moral or ethical. For something such as a highly paid information technology position, there are lots of people who end up trying to make it without highly paid information technology positions, and while it may be a struggle they do successfully accomplish it. Moreover if you are taking two or three full-time jobs, then that means one or two other people who also need to make ends meet suddenly can’t get those positions because someone else has them.

Complaining about a lack of opportunities while taking up several opportunities just seems hypocritical to me. Several people could have taken up those jobs, and instead one person is going to do a half-ass job at a bunch of them. Again, this isn’t an ethical argument, it’s a practical one.

There’s an argument that workers are being exploited and therefore the workers should exploit right back. This isn’t the sort of argument that we want to be making. The company is paying you have all the power in the world to make everyone’s life a lot worse because a minority of people are trying to scam them. A race to the bottom is not good. If you feel like you’re being exploited, then it’s time to take measures to stop being exploited, that doesn’t justify exploiting others. Moreover, if it becomes common practice for workers to be working several jobs at once, this doesn’t actually make the workers less exploited. Effectively, it will artificially drive up the supply of labor, meaning that companies won’t have to compete as hard for workers, meaning that the labor market will become more exploitative. As well, the people who are working two or three jobs won’t need to be making enough money to survive because they’ve got two or three jobs, meaning but the people who are doing this are effectively making it harder for people who aren’t doing this to survive on one job, again ensuring that the labor market becomes more exploitative, not less.

Finally, as I’ve already said, the autonomy of workers is a moot argument because once they are paying you for your time it is not your time to be autonomous within. The more people try to scam the systems we live in, the more those systems are going to push back and workers who are otherwise being honest are going to face less autonomy because the employers are going to feel that they can’t trust their workers if they aren’t being micromanaged.

There’s another major issue, and that’s not working from home is already considered an extremely privileged position. People who work from home don’t need to commute, they’re working conditions can be whatever they wish them to be, including listening to whatever they want on the radio, watching YouTube videos while working, even having a beer in the backyard while attending meetings as long as you don’t get caught. So you have these people who are some of the most privileged in the entire job market, and they take this privilege and they end up using it to take yet another privilege, this ability to work two or three jobs at the same time that people who are still in the office don’t get. In terms of fairness, fairness is completely out the window once we’re talking about disparities like that.

I would suspect that over time, if this became a widespread practice then it would just mean the end to work from home. Employers aren’t employing people so that they can be number three or number four on the list.

Consider a loan you take out yourself. You can take out a variable rate loan, or you can take out a fixed rate loan. If you take out a variable rate loan and rates drop, then the bank passes the savings on to you, but if rates rise, the bank passes the costs on to you. If you take out a fixed rate loan, then if rates drop the bank benefits, but if rates rise the bank takes that risk. For that reason, the bank charges a bit more for a fixed rate loan, because they’re taking on the risk of interest rates rising. The longer the rate is locked in, the larger the premium you pay because the bank is taking on more risk that interest rates rise. So imagine that you were in a situation like that, and you had a variable rate mortgage and interest rates dropped and the bank refused to register the drop in interest rates. In that case, you were spending less money so that the bank would be taking less risk but it broke the deal. How about if you had a fixed rate mortgage, and rates continue to rise, and the bank refused to honor your interest rate and just increased it because it wanted to. During the good times you had paid a premium in order to have that fixed interest rate, and they stepped in and broke the deal.

Let’s say that you were hiring someone to build a deck. And you paid them time and materials to build that deck. Let’s say that you were home for a full day, and you knew full well that they weren’t at your house building that deck, but then you saw an invoice come in for that full day of labor. Would you be okay with that? How about if you saw the crew that you were paying for at another place building someone else’s deck? How about if you found out that on that day they were charging three other people to build their decks, but only one of them actually had the crew at their house building their deck. Would you accept “I don’t know what the problem is, your deck got built didn’t it?” — I think most people would be in court and rightfully so. That company that said that they would be building your deck, that charged you to build your deck that day that wasn’t their building your deck committed fraud. Let’s say that the entire crew is just sitting there waiting for the cement truck to arrive. And you’re paying the entire crew to just sit there. That’s what they’re getting paid for. Just because they’re not doing anything doesn’t mean that they can go off and work on someone else’s deck on your dime. If they go off to work on someone else’s deck, that person can pay for the work crew..

So let’s say that you agree to a company to get paid a certain amount of money each day to be available for a certain number of hours that day to work. Whether you are productive or not you make the same amount of money. The company is taking the risk here. The hours that you are productive, they pay you. The hours that you’re completely unproductive, they pay you. If there’s nothing to do but stand around, that’s what they’re paying you to do. If you want to go work for someone else during those hours, you should turn off the payments from the one employer and turn on the payments to the other employer. Of course, that isn’t how most employment contracts work because for jobs the employer wants your time and is paying for it.

So how do you do this morley, legally, ethically, etc? It’s really straightforward. Be honest.

If you want to establish a contract with an employer where you’re going to be working for several employers, that’s something you’ll have to negotiate. You can set it up where there are certain performance guarantees they’re paying for in maintenance work such as keeping KPIs above a certain level, and if it takes less time to achieve those KPIs you come out ahead and if it takes more time to achieve those KPIs you come out behind and are likely charged a penalty. You can set it up where you’re charging by the hour, and if you’re charging another employer for an hour you don’t charge the employers you aren’t working at for the same hour. This will mean that your employer is no longer paying you a premium for the risk taken of you not being productive in a certain hour, and either you’re taking the risk that you need much more time to achieve your KPIs than you expected, or you’re taking the risk that you don’t have anything to do so you can’t charge any of your employers for your time.

If you’d prefer keeping the employers separate, then you’ll have to do something like staggering the hours so you work 8 hours at Employer A and 8 hours at Employer B. Notwithstanding any clauses in your employment contract preventing you from moonlighting, this is usually totally acceptable (but it’s also a recipe for burn-out), and you get to keep the benefits of the company taking on the risk of time you’re getting paid but not being productive for them.

This isn’t a novel problem, it only appears as such to people working in jobs who have an opportunity to deal with multiple clients at once. It’s a problem professionals have had to deal with forever. If you’re a contract lawyer or engineer working in a central office you operate independently of any particular client, you might have many clients. It’s written into the codes of conduct for these professions that you must bill fairly, and if you double bill for the same hour you’ve committed a crime and will be punished both by the law and by your professional regulator.

Let’s go back to our deck example. If you agreed at the outset to pay a fixed fee for the deck installation within a certain period of time then it doesn’t matter where the work crew is or who it’s doing work for because you’re not paying for the time the deck builders spend on your job, you’re paying for a deck and it’s their risk to make sure they do the job on time and on budget or they’ll take the hit. Otherwise, they could charge by the hour (or even by the 15 minute chunk) and meticulously ensure that only one client was being charged for time at one time. In that way, the deck builder could get paid ethically and legally. It would benefit you during times like waiting for the cement truck because someone else would be paying for the work crew at that time.

Of course, all this could get turned on its head if you manage to find some employers who are willing to pay you an hourly wage and are ok with you double charging by having multiple jobs. You’ll want to get such an unorthodox agreement in writing from all the parties involved, because it’s highly unusual and a simple verbal agreement isn’t likely to hold up in court if the employer/employee relationship goes south and they decide to sue you for breach of contract.

There’s another issue you need to be aware of: Depending on your position (and typically this only applies to high level executives or managers), you may have a fiduciary duty to the companies you work on. That means that you need to put the company’s needs above your own. In such a case, you may not be able to be employed by both a company and its competitors and meet that obligation, and that might not be something you can sign away.

These concepts apply to engineering technologists and tradesmen equally, though most tradesmen are not held to any sort of professional code of ethics, they are held to laws against fraud. It’s something to keep in mind because if unethical practices become common, there will be consequences as companies strive to protect themselves from fraud.

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Management and supervision Trades

Labor is not a fungible commodity

I’m Jason Firth.

There’s a statement that I’ve said on a large number of occasions, basically that labor is not a fungible commodity.

To understand what I mean by this, first we need to go to the definition of a fungible commodity. A commodity that is fungible is a commodity that is basically interchangeable. If you buy a block of gold, you don’t really care if it was Canadian gold or us gold or Chinese gold, the gold is gold. As long as the quality is what it says it is, you’re good. There are a lot of quantities that are fungible like this. Generally speaking, oil of a certain grade is going to be fungible. Wheat could be fungible. Canola oil could be fungible. There might be specific boutique applications where you absolutely want to have a certain country or a certain companies product, but in the overwhelming majority of cases, as long as you have the product you have the product and it doesn’t really matter where it came from.

Now let’s take a look at labor. You could get 100 people, and every one of them is going to be different. Most of them probably aren’t even going to be good at the thing that you want them to be good at, but let’s pretend for a minute that of those 100 people you have 100 instrument techs. Let’s even go so far as to say that they are 100 very good instrument techs. You’re going to have 100 completely different skill sets. In a broad sense, perhaps you’re going to have some people who are better at construction, perhaps you’re going to have some people that are better at maintenance, perhaps you’re going to have some people that are better at the programming side of things, perhaps you’re going to have some people that are better at the design side of things, instrumentation and process control are such broad categories that even if you take 100 really good people you’re going to end up with 100 completely different skill sets.

This is very important for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that you cannot plan as if labor is a fungible quantity. If you simply think that you will throw hours of work at a problem I’m afraid you’re in for a rude awakening. If for example, you give a programming job to somebody who’s an old school instrument tech, it’s very likely that that old school instrument tech is used to turning a screwdriver and pulling on a wrench and rebuilding control valves, and they might be very very good, and they are going to struggle a lot on a programming job. If by contrast, you take one of the new breed of very technical high technology instrument techs and give them a sea can full of control valves to rebuild, there’s a good chance that they’re going to struggle with that.

Besides that, the level of planning that you need for an individual may be different. There are some people where in order to properly plan a job you need to go through every step, provide every drawing, provide every data sheet, kit every single tool. On the other hand, there are other people where for the same job you can give them very little and they’re going to be more successful than if you had tried to micromanage them. Having an idea of who’s going to be doing the job when you’re planning a job is quite important.

If you are dealing with a team that you intend to be working for a long time with, there is a little bit of wiggle room. Just because your old school instrument Tech would prefer working on control valves doesn’t mean that he can’t be trained, and just because your new school technologist would prefer to be working on a computer doesn’t mean that he can’t be trained to rebuild control valves. In fact, I would argue that over a long-term this is an ideal strategy.

Regardless, it’s quite important to realize that labor is not a fungible commodity, that you can’t just throw hours at a problem and expect to have the job done the same way, that not all skill sets are the same, that planning requirements are going to be different, and that long-term training can help people who aren’t good at one thing become much better at that thing so that you can end up with a better balance team. These are all things to keep in mind.

Thanks for reading!

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Trades

Women in trades and technology

I’m Jason Firth.

I’d like to suggest today, that women should look more at the trades and technology as a career choice.

Of course, there’s lots of people right now suggesting that. There’s people who are way smarter, and way richer, and way more powerful suggesting that. Obviously, another voice isn’t really that useful right now.

So I’d like to give the one thing I have that many of those people don’t: A view from the floor. I’m going to tell you why it makes a lot of sense to get into the trades and technology, I’m going to tell you about some of the challenges you can expect to face, and I’m going to tell you why the trades and technology is about a lot more than wires and ports.

Let’s start off by by looking at why the trades and technology are a great choice for anyone. Many jobs in the trades and technology are highly skilled, highly paid jobs that tend to have great benefit plans as well. Even tradesmen who lose their jobs, often find new ones way faster than others. Besides that, you get respect: If there’s one thing that people respect, it’s “I can’t do this thing, but this person can, and I need them.”

Besides that, the trades can be really fulfilling. Imagine, at the end of the day, looking at a building you’ve helped build, or light, or control. Imagine working in maintenance and being the person who solves the problem nobody else could, or getting a plant running that was down, costing tens of thousands of dollars an hour.

As for why women in particular should be interested, let’s start at the beginning of your career: When any woman I know says “I’m thinking of going back to school”, I immediately suggest taking an engineering technology course. As a starving student looking at scholarships and bursaries, it was immediately obvious that there’s thousands of dollars up for grabs in scholarships and bursaries for women in technology. There are plenty of other options for women, and many sort of “Traditionally female” choices out there, but why pay full price to follow what others do if you can get a helping hand to try something different? Besides that, taking an unconventional path has other benefits: Companies want to hire women for trades and technology positions. The problem is that the applicants aren’t there! The rewards are there for someone who wants to take the risk of doing something different.

Now, it isn’t always going to be easy.

Imagine being the first human on an alien planet, and the aliens don’t know how to be around a human. They might behave quite inappropriately at times. Unfortunately, because technology and the trades are so male-dominated, you get people who don’t know how to act with women in the workplace. I have to admit, you’ll sometimes be treated unfairly based on your gender. It isn’t acceptable, but it is real. It takes courage to lead, and the only way things will get better is for more women to engage.

Another thing that is true, is that some trades take more physical strength than others, and that can put women at a disadvantage. If you’re a millwright, you might be asked to really strain against a wrench. If you’re an electrician, you might be asked to pull really large cables. In these cases, you’re going to have to rely on your team to help, or find a different way to do the job. Not every job is like that. Instrument technicians don’t tend to need much brute strength for most of their jobs, and you don’t need arms like tree trunks to use a mouse and keyboard to draw in CAD.

But one criticism that I don’t believe is true is the image of trades and technology as a cold, inhuman field, all ports and wires and bolts, disconnected from people.

I’ve always been told that it isn’t just important that you can do these huge things, but that you can help others understand it too. Besides being a person who can do things, you need to be someone who can teach others, to help better understand what you can do for them.

Consider the largest company in the world right now by market cap: Apple. Steve Jobs wasn’t the first person to make a home computer, but his company made the home computer accessible for human beings. They weren’t the first to create a smart phone, but they were the first to make it accessible for human beings. They weren’t the first to make an MP3 player or on-line music store, but they were the first to make it accessible for human beings. It’s important to be good at your trade or the technology, but it’s equally important to be able to connect the technology with the people who aren’t you.

I personally spend a lot of time repairing and calibrating instruments, tuning loops, running cables, designing systems, and programming. However, I spend more and more time working with people who aren’t instrumentation and control specialists trying to help them understand what my team can do for them, or helping people learn exactly what tools we provide and how they can use those tools to help themselves, or describing to non-technical folks work we’ve done. The genius who doesn’t deal with people probably isn’t going to succeed compared to a person with less technical skill who is nonetheless willing to work with other people and other groups, and really help those groups make the best use of instrumentation, controls, and automation for the benefit of the organization.

There’s no reason why women should count themselves out of that.

Thanks for reading!

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Trades

The Path of the Certified Engineering Technologist for Instrumentation

I’m Jason Firth.

A while back, I wrote about some examples of situations where using unqualified instrument techs caused catastrophic damage and the potential for a massive loss of life. A few days ago, I wrote about one path to becoming a qualified instrument tech, the path of the Journeyman.

Today, I want to speak a little about another path a person can take to become qualified, the path of the Certified Engineering Technologist.

To understand what an engineering technologist is, we need to take a step back for a moment, and look at trades and engineering.

A tradesman (a journeyman, for example) learns the nitty gritty of making control systems happen: They learn the procedures for calibrating different instruments, the step by step instructions for accomplishing specific practical tasks. On the other end, you have the engineer, who intimately understands the theoretical frameworks that help them to develop new products. Between the two, you have an engineering technologist, who has substantial practical knowledge, as well as substantial understanding of theoretical frameworks.

An engineering technologist will have some of the tools of a tradesman, and some of the tools of an engineer. Where as tradesman will know how to tune a loop using Zeigler-Nichols, an engineering technologist will be able to tune the loop using Zeigler-Nichols, and will also be able to model a control loop in the laplace domain to determine stability, and can solve some of the simpler differential equations required. An engineer will be able to model a control loop in the laplace domain, but can also do a full thermodynamic, fluid dynamic, kinetic model to determine things far outside the scope of mere control systems.

Just like the path of the Journeyman, Certification of Engineering Technologists is handled by different legislation in each province. Because of this, the options open to engineering technologists can be quite different from province to province.

In any case, the beginning of this path is an accredited college. The program is called different things around the country. I went to Instrumentation Engineering Technology, but one program is called Computer control engineering technology, or automation engineering technology.

Regardless of the name of the program, you’re going to be looking at a lot of the same curriculum: Kinematics, fluid dynamics, electronics and electrical systems, calculus, linear process control, advanced process control, computer process control, final control elements, measurement, and quite a bit more. Along the way, you’ll have to complete a term project, and a written report.

Some programs try to cram the entire engineering technology curriculum into 2 years, but most programs are 3 years in length. Often, you’ll start off taking an engineering technician course, then with an extra year of work, you’ll upgrade your engineering technician program to an engineering technology program.

The engineering technologist then needs to go out and get an appropriate job, and learn for a couple years.

Eventually, they can apply to become a Certified Engineering Technologist. This will mean their education and work experience will be scrutinized, and they will either be approved or not. However; there is one final step to becoming an engineering technologist: The technologist must learn all the appropriate legislation, and memorize the code of ethics for their professional organization. They must pass the Professional Practice Exam, proving they know it.

Once the Professional Practice Exam is passed, and once they are accepted to become Certified Engineering Technologists, then they are given a certificate showing that they are certified engineering technologists.

To be a Certified Member means you’ve proven yourself in the field, as well as in the classroom. It also means that you’ve agreed to follow a strict professional code of ethics, and that you understand that violating that code of ethics could mean not just losing your certification, but facing fines from your professional association.

Unlike with Journeymen, there is no red seal program between provinces with your CET designation. If you will be working in a different province, you must transfer your membership to that province.

Different provinces also provide different opportunities to CETs. Alberta, for example, provides the opportunity for experienced Certified Engineering Technologists to gain the ability to practice professional engineering within a limited scope; something called a “P. Tech(Eng)”. Ontario is working towards a similar designation with the “LET” designation.

Certified Engineering Technologists who meet extremely stringent standards, and who are willing to undergo substantial upgrading and study can also be granted a P. Eng. in Ontario, a full license to perform professional engineering.

Thanks for reading!

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Trades

The path of the Journeyman Instrument Technician

I’m Jason Firth.

A few days ago, I wrote about some examples of situations where using unqualified instrument techs caused catastrophic damage and the potential for a massive loss of life.

Today, I’m going to talk a bit about one of the paths a person can take to become a qualified instrument technician.

Centuries ago in Europe, there existed a system of guilds. These were organizations that controlled different skilled crafts and trades. They served two purposes: First, they served the public by ensuring that if a person was doing a trade, they had trained under different master craftsmen and had met a certain level of skill. Second, they served themselves by creating a monopoly in that craft or trade, which allowed them to charge more.

A person who wanted to enter a certain craft or trade would train as an apprentice under a master craftsman without charging a fee for their work, until that person had spent enough time working with their master, after which they would be released from their obligation, and they would become a Journeyman. In the German tradition, a Journeyman would then don the traditional garment, a black suit with a wide brimmed hat, and travel from master to master, learning the trade.

I want to spend a bit more time on this idea, because I find a lot of the aspects of it romantic. Some other journeyman traditions were that a Journeyman would wear a gold earring, to pay the gravedigger if they died. A journeyman would start their journey with 5 gold pieces, and after their journey was complete, they would have the same 5 gold pieces, to signify that the journey was not to become rich, but to learn their trade or craft. About half way through their journey (in terms of years), they would settle in with a master, and a few years after that, they’d begin work on the piece they would present to the guild; their masterpiece. This masterpiece would be the final test that convinces the guild that the journeyman is ready to become a master themselves. At that point, as a master tradesman or craftsman recognised by the guild, they could open their own shop in a town.

Today, some vestiges of that time still exist, but the guilds of antiquity are long disbanded.

Today, apprenticeship programs in Canada are managed by the provinces, each having its own legislation authorising the existence of such programs and describing how the program shall be administered. In addition, the 1994 Agreement on Internal Trade includes provisions for the “Red Seal” program, which allows a journeyman to travel anywhere in the country and maintain their certification freely and automatically.

Because each program is administered by a different body, there are differences in how each program is run, and the terminology used. The two most popular names are “Industrial Instrument Mechanic” and “Instrumentation and Control Technician”, although Alberta and the Northwest Territories call the certification “Instrument Technician”, and Saskatchewan and Nunavut call their certification “Industrial Instrument Technician”.

In most provinces, there are two paths to becoming a journeyman instrument tech.

The first path is called “apprenticeship”. In this path, a worker with no previous experience is hired as an apprentice. This person will learn from and assist the journeymen for 4-5 years. During the process, the journeymen will sign off that an apprentice has reached proficiency with a certain task, out of hundreds included in a book provided to the apprentice. Every year, there is a trade school the apprentice must attend for 10 weeks. The apprentice is often laid off for these 10 weeks, and won’t have their normal income during trade school. At the end of these 5 years, the apprentice must write a final trade exam. Depending on the jurisdiction, there can be multiple trade exams: One provincial, and one inter-provincial. (more on this later)

Although theoretically a person off the street may be hired for an apprenticeship, hiring a person for an apprenticeship is a gamble for the company. A company hiring an apprentice risks having spent time and money training an apprentice without getting a journeyman at the end, so they’ll hedge their bets. One way they’ll do that is hiring a person who already has shown a proficiency with instrumentation, by successfully completing an engineering technician or engineering technology program. Other times, a particularly bright operator at a union plant may get the first shot at an apprenticeship. It’s also common for journeyman electricians to apprentice as an instrument technician, since some of the skill sets align.

The second path is called “trade qualification”. In this path, a worker gets hired as an instrument tech through their education (an engineering technology diploma meets the academic requirements) and experience, and works alongside journeymen for 4-5 years. They must get their skill sets signed off by their supervisor. After working for 4-5 years and achieving the appropriate competencies, that person can write the trade exams the same way an apprentice can, and will be granted a full journeyman certification if they pass.

Occasionally, people use the term “interprovincial” and “provincial” with respect to their journeyman certification. Things vary between provinces, but generally there are different standards one must meet to achieve the provincial certification versus the interprovincial certification. In Alberta, for instance, an apprentice writes their provincial test first, then must write the interprovincial test later. In Ontario, for a long time, a person who got one score on their interprovincial exam (say, a 60%) was granted a provincial certification, but if they got another score (say, a 70%), they were granted an interprovincial certification.

There’s a variety of different categories of skills that an instrument tech must have to achieve journeyman certification.

Common Occupational Skills

Understanding of legislation and workplace standards in the workplace, including, but not limited to worker safety legislation, WHIMIS, PPE and lockout/tagout.

Process Measuring And Indicating Devices

There’s a huge number of instruments out there that a journeyman must understand and be capable of installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting. In addition, there are certain documentation and calibration standards which must be met to consider a calibration or validation valid, and certain tools a journeyman must have to assist in troubleshooting. When comparing similar trades, it’s this scope that differentiates the instrument tech while working on instrumentation.

Safety And Security Systems And Devices

There’s a huge number of safety related instruments out there that a journeyman must understand and be capable of installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting. In addition, there are certain documentation and calibration standards which must be met to consider a calibration or validation valid, and certain tools a journeyman must have to assist in troubleshooting.

Hydraulic, Pneumatic And Electrical Systems

One class that every instrument tech must take in trade school that no electrician will need to take is fluid mechanics. There are certain theories that must be understood for hydraulic and pneumatic systems to make sense. Pneumatics in particular may be a huge element of instrumentation — You might have an entire plant running on pneumatic controls, and an instrument tech must be capable of working on all of it. In addition, there’s the need to know electrical and electronic systems.

Final Control Devices

All the measurement in the world is meaningless if you can’t control something with that measurement. Instrument techs must intimately understand valves, actuators, positioners, variable speed drives, and all the various components that connecting them together. Fail safety is a critical part of this.

Communication Systems And Devices

Communication is a growing facet of instrumentation. Techs today need to understand control network systems and devices, signal converters, gateways, bridges, switches, and media converters. Recently the ISA asked: “Is instrumentation evolving into IT?”. I don’t think it is, because of all the other things that are involved, but the question is relevant considering the increased knowledge of IT required.

Control Systems And Process Control

This covers a wide scope, from discrete PID controllers, to PLCs, PACs and DCSes, to loop modelling and control fundamentals. There’s a number of different tools an instrument tech needs to understand, from feed forward and cascade loops, to ratio loops, to the different standards for tagging and description to ensure the next guy understands what you’ve set up.

There’s a lot to learn, and with all these areas of expertise comes a huge responsibility.

Thanks for reading!

Trade National Occupational Analysis – Instrumentation and Controls Technician

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Trades

The Power Destructitron X

I’m Jason Firth.

This post is meant to test embedding youtube videos into a post. This video is relevant to the blog because it is my term project from college: The Power Destructitron X.

The story of this surprisingly complicated project has two completely different morals. I think which one you decide on depends on your attitude.

As part of the instrumentation program, everyone has to take part in a term project. Each term project had a certain difficulty, tailored for a certain number of people working on the project. One guy was building a weather station. Another group was building a heat tester. Yet another was building an XY table.

The project I ended up being given was to create a controller to very precisely control a rotary table. I had a rotary encoder, and a stepper motor and stepper motor controller, and an inductive proximity switch. The basic theory was quite simple: Find a home position, determine the number of stepper motor counts that reached 100%, and control the number of counts, while paying attention to the binary encoder. I was going to do all the control in a modicon momentum PLC, and use Wonderware to display the data.

Well, I sort of jumped the gun. All the parts fit together beautifully, the programming was really easy, and I was basically done the assignment on the first day.

When I showed Mr. Shirtliffe, the teacher in charge of the instrumentation engineering technology program there for 30 years at that point that I had completed the project, He seemed to get pretty excited. He stared picking up random parts — a robotic hand here, a piece of an old laser printer there, a brutal looking 24vdc motor, and he gave me a new task: To build a “pick and place robot”.

Well, the project that was originally a difficulty level of 1, just became a difficulty level of 11. I went from having some nice low voltage, low current stuff, to having a huge variety of devices. There was suddenly now air, high current DC, AC, low current DC, I even ended up building some motor controllers from scratch…and I had to find some way to put them all together in a way that would somehow move a block around.

This isn’t hyperbole either; I was always in the classroom at 8am, but for weeks on end I’d stay in the lab until right before the last city bus that would take me home for the night. It was a huge amount of learning, research, work, and rework.

This video shows what I ended up with. Obviously this was before I had developed any real trade skills, but I’m still proud of the fact that I was able to somehow make a thing (no matter how contrived) out of these completely random parts.

(and no, this is probably not what I’d build today with an extra 8 years of design and field experience under my belt.)

As for the two different morals, it depends on your point of view: On one hand, there’s the saying that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. That’s a perfectly legitimate way of looking at things: I would have gotten just as good of a mark if I’d kept my head down and pretended to be working on this thing that was already working, after all. However; I think of it this way: Instead of simply doing a fairly simple project that wouldn’t teach me that much, I got a chance to really stretch my legs, and learn first-hand the best way about a bunch of different controls.

Thanks for reading!