30 years versus a certain curriculum.

I want to clear the air about something that has been problematic for years. I do not have the standard degree in my field.

Recently I have been in close contact with many engineering, architecture, and construction hiring managers. The communication has revealed much and disappointed me on a number of occasions as I seek a new employer.

It’s the BSME. Employers are fixated on this credential. Filtering talent based on the degree-type parameter is not always justifiable. The filter does not do justice to the tremendous personal capacity and energy I bring to help make things happen. I have not been lucky in my search, anyway.

There is a serious shortage of good engineer talent. I bring a capacity to handle and coordinate many varying and complex issues of building design and making them benefit all.

MEP design is complex, no doubt, and a great degree of trust and reliance is placed on the project engineer. I am intimately familiar with the design process. I know how to make a design constructable. I promote and enforce high efficiency (LEED certification and Energy Star rating), and otherwise, I always strive to deliver “high performance” solutions.

Experience is the great leveler. I want to make this perfectly clear. My 30 years of practical HVAC and electrical design and build experience is at least EQUAL to the knowledge gained from a 5-year BSME. I bring a lot more than a general engineering knowledge to the table.

So how did this happen? A: In my life, engineering curriculum’s were not available to me when I was ready, willing and able.

I went to college after high school expecting to be an architect. When I attended Miami U, the world was changing and so was I. I was not as great an architectural designer as I thought I was. By the time I graduated, many opportunities and assumptions that seemed inevitable at the beginning had vanished. After I graduated and took my first job as a controls design /draftsman, the path was clearly leading toward consulting engineers, HVAC and electrical design.

When I decided to go back to college for a second degree, in 1996, the electrical engineering (only) curriculum at University of North Florida was small, and seemed stifling. After much deliberation, I concluded that a wider study of information science was more relevant to my future. So the die was cast.