Whether you work in the industry or not it is good to know what the Control Systems Engineer role is. This article will explain the role and what skills you are expected to have for it.
A Control Systems Engineer works in the Industrial Automation to design and maintain processes that automate manufacturing, mining, water and wastewater, food and beverage, and more. They do this by designing and installing systems composed of PLCs, DCS, SCADA, Instrumentation, and Telemetry.
Now that you know basically what a control systems engineer is, we can dig in deeper and look at various skills and job opportunities for control systems engineers.
Control System Industries
Before we look at the specifics of the role let’s look at the industries that use control system engineers. I have taught people from all of these industries over the last 15 years teaching for a Fortune 500 company. If you would like to know more about me see the About page of the website.
Industries that use Control System Engineers:
- Water & Wastewater
- Oil & Gas
- Power Generation & Distribution
- Manufacturing
- Food & Beverage
- Shipping
- Building Management Systems
- Mining
NOTE: This is just a short list but there are more and it basically is an industry that requires industrial-grade automation.
Educational Requirements
The first thing you probably want to know is what the educational requirements are for a Control Systems Engineer. It used to be the word Engineer could be used for any job title but now legally the word can only be used by those people that have formal training that is accepted by the country Engineers associations. For a list of those organizations check the link below.
LINK: Country Engineers Associations
Basically the qualification required is normally a Bachelor in an accepted subject area that the association accepts like Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or Computer Science. The best way to find out the right qualification is to look at the Engineers association website and the online job advertisements in your country.
If you were in the USA you would look at the requirements of people hiring on Indeed.com. If you were in the UK you would look at Monster.co.uk. If you were in Australia you would look at Seek.com.au. If you are in another country look at your local job website.
As well as your qualification you will also need the following skills:
- Configure and Install Instrumentation
- Low Voltage Certificate (In most countries)
- PLC Programming
- SCADA / HMI Configuration
- RTU Configuration
- Pipes and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID)
- PID Loop Control Basics
- Process Historian & Reporting Basics
- Industry Knowledge for that Industry
- Computer Networking and Diagnostics
- Basic Fault Finding Knowledge
- Knowledge of Industry Standards
Now don’t worry if some of this stuff you don’t know quite yet as we will discuss them all in detail below.
IMPORTANT: It is not required to have every skill depending on what type of Control Systems Engineer you will be but a good understanding of the basics is always a good idea. Each Job advertisement will request slightly different skills.
Instrumentation
Is a collective term for equipment to measure and collect information in an industrial automation plant or process. This information is generally fed in as digital or analog data. So whether a piece of equipment is on or off as a digital signal or 1 or 0. The alternative is a changing value as an analog value like an oven temperature. It can have a value of 0 to 16,000 in value at the instrumentation level. This is then converted to an engineering scale of 0 to 255 degrees celsius for example.
Low Voltage Certification
While an Electrician has the full certification to work with domestic power and an industrial electrician works with all power sizes. Low voltage is for automation systems that are 0 – 20 mA (Milli Amps). 0mA being turned off and 4mA to 20mA being the 16000 increments for an analog signal. If you are certified in your country for low voltage then you can wire automation equipment together.
PLC Programming
There are 5 IEC programming languages that you can use to program all vendor programmable logic controllers (PLC). A PLC is essentially a computer that has been built to handle the harsh environments in an industrial plant. They work in an endless loop to do the low-level control of a plant or process. The 5 IEC programming languages are Ladder, Structured Text, Sequential Function Chart, Instruction List, and Function Block Diagram.
SCADA / HMI Configuration
A human-machine interface (HMI) is a replacement for old push-button control panels in control rooms. These days they are used for a single piece of equipment or a production line in a plant or process if the SCADA system does not work. A supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system is a visual representation of the plant or process that you normally see in a control room in a typical complex plant or process.
RTU Configuration
Remote Telemetry Units (RTUs) are used for Industrial Automation systems that are geographically dispersed. They use data radios to transfer information and are generally used for Water and Wastewater and Oil and Gas. Telemetry networks are designed to prioritize traffic as the data bandwidth is limited. While PLCs are used for hard-wired networks. RTUs are used for distributed networks.
Pipes and Instrumentation Diagrams
P&IDs are used to design Automation Control networks to show the plant and process design in a visual way. Understanding how to design these documents and implement them in a real plant is essential to being a Control Systems Engineer.
PID Loop Control
Proportional, Integral and Derivative control is all about how you keep a real-world value close to a set point. Simply think of it as how your air conditioner works. You set what temperature you want it on and the air conditioner itself cools and stops to try and keep the temperature at what you have set it too. We will discuss this more in later articles.
Process Historian and Reporting
When we look at storing data in a database like SQL Server or Oracle we look at normally storing data in a relational database. Industrial Automation plants and processes collect large amounts of data and require special types of databases. These are called process historians. They are used for collecting large amounts of data quickly and that can be done 10x faster than normal relational databases on average.
Industry Knowledge
When you are a Control Systems Engineer you not only need to know the technologies that are in all industries but you also need to know the specific industry you are in. How each plant or process works is different and having specific industry knowledge makes you very employable.
Computer Networks and Diagnostics
Ever since Automation and Control became computerized all of the systems are based on computer networking. It is critical you understand the basics of how TCP/IP works and how you can diagnose these networks. This will allow you to do root cause analysis. So basically find in a plant or process the problem that you can fix to keep everything running.
Basic Fault Finding
It is one thing to be able to design and build industrial automation systems. It is another to understand them enough to be able to find the faults and fix them. Root cause analysis after a plant or process has been created is on average 80% of the lifecycle of a plant or process. This is normally done by the maintenance staff. While operational staff keeps a plant running the maintenance staff fix it when it breaks.
Industry Standards
Whether it is at the design stage or the maintenance stage having a set of standards helps you be consistent in your approach and speed up building and the long term maintenance cycle. The international society of automation (ISA) standards has standards for continuous, batch, and discrete processes. There are also specific standards for each industry that you work in. It is important to know them.
Salary
A Control Systems Engineer is a well paid position in most countries and there are always jobs available. The range of salary in the USA is $62k to $116k on payscale. The graduate salaries would be at the lower end and after your first 2 to 5 years experience you should be able to get the median salary of $80k quite easily.
The best way to find the real salaries go to job websites I mentioned earlier in the article. Then filter by salary to see how many jobs at each pay level. This is what I personally do.
If you are interested in salaries in the UK or Australia click the links below.
LINK: Control System Salary Australia
LINK: Control System Salary UK
Career Potential
In this role you will be learning new technologies all the time and some your work will pay for and some you will have to pick up on your own. This is generally new hardware and software. The vendors that supply these products do provide training for all of their products.
This is definitely not a job you will get bored of. Each new project has its own challenges and different technologies that you will use. If you are working for an end user you will not have as much variety due to the plant or process technologies will remain fairly constant. Therefore, I would recommend you start with a system integrator to widen your knowledge before finding the industry vertical or company you like the best.
Like with most jobs you have the option of taking a technical path where you become an expert in one of the above technologies or you could do a managerial path. If you choose a managerial path you can either do project management or staff management.
Largest Industry Companies
When you are looking at what companies have the above technologies you might want to research and where you may be able to get a job here are some of the biggest companies in the industry.
Automation Industry Companies:
If you are new to the industry it would be a good idea to check out their graduate programs in your local country.