Looking to start a career in DCS

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Thread Starter

MichaelMorris

My name is Michael Morris, I am Looking to start a career in DCS but to be honest I have no idea where to begin... I know a guy that works with DCS... I think for a company call Blue Mountain Engergy or something, and I think his job is to create the graphics for the monitoring systems or something. He has shown me images of what he does and it looks like bar graphs that are active and show the current status of different parts of the system (PLC's, I'm guessing) It looks really interesting and I'd like to know more about it but there are so many parts to "DCS" that I have no idea how to single out that part of the job, or where to look to start trying to formally learn how to do this. Does anyone out there know where I can find resources that I can use to start from the bottom - up? I have a wide array of experience with "LRU" (Line Replaceable Unit) and control systems from my work in the army. I'm pretty sure its also considered a DCS in the civilian world, I also have a lot of experience in different programming languages so I'm not completely jumping into this without the ability to relate.
 
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Bob Peterson

These days there are few careers.

I don't know where the future is going but it seems to me the most important thing will be to get a solid education first.

You can start off doing things you can learn on the job, and there are plenty of people doing that, but if you lose that job it is a lot harder to get another gig without the right credentials.
 
Ok, so the first question is .... can you program? And I don't mean can you hack together some code at home - do you have a solid computer qualification ? Initially, this will define how you get into this field.

If you're looking at a career as a DCS engineer, then this is a software job that requires significant process, electrical and instrumentation knowledge.

If you're looking at a career as a DCS support technician, then this is an electrical and instrumentation career with reasonably good software understanding.

All of these skills can be improved "on the job" but you need a good starting point. At least one of my previous employers used a lot of ex-military guys in their field service group, so this may be your best way in. However, most control systems companies (at least in this part of the world) will be typically looking for either electrical/instrument apprentices or software graduates. If you can show that you have equivalent qualifications and training then you should have a reasonable chance.

Good luck.
 
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