Chapter 1 - A crass view of my profession

 So where does an instrument engineer stand in this industry? I can comment on this for an instrument engineer in an engineering consultancy, because that is where I've worked for ...the past 15 years. Like all others, my career has been a roller coaster ride in its own rights, no comparison to anybody else. 

An instrument engineer is a 'Jack of all trades...'. 

My first boss had modified the latter part of the proverb as per his career experience as an instrument professional in an engineering company. When I started out, I disagreed with him, later on my own experience proved him right - 'Jack of all trades and should be master of all' was his version and now, there is not even a ppm (parts per million for all those non techies out there.) of me which disagrees !!   

Instrumentation is a little bit of everything - Process, Electrical, Electronics, Mechanical, Piping, Equipment. Cost wise too, it is just a bit - compared to big brothers - Mechanical, Piping and equipment. Quantum wise - sheer numbers of instruments is huge. The technical intricacies of each and every item is unique and require the input of almost every department. Inter discipline interfaces is quite a task. 

We struggle for our process data, fight with vendors to give instrument dimensions to piping and war with mechanical so that they take package instrumentation seriously. We have to correctly estimate our feeder requirements for Electrical well in advance, even before our packages are finalized and we get reprimanded by Civil if the cut-outs wrong. 

Engineering costs for Instrumentation are something like 8% probably only close to Electrical. Material costs hardly exceed 10% of which control system package makes up a major portion. 

I am not belittling the work of the instrumentation department. It is by no means insignificant. However, I have always had a feeling that instrumentation is always given the last word, the last say. We are the last link in the chain and yet it is well known that all the links in the chain are as necessary as the one next to it. 

The men and women who become overall project managers of a project in an engineering company almost NEVER have an instrumentation background, unless they have come from a client organization !!



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