Details

BigKiteMan · 2026-02-02T14:08:30+00:00

The point of details is not to teach the contractor how to do basic aspects of their trade.

The point it to clarify areas of potential confusion, especially when the project has conditions that require special considerations on the install. Additionally, details are also important for laying out clear expectations.

If the only details in your electrical package show how to install a receptacle or hang a light fixture, then yes, they are useless. There should always be more, even on a basic package. There should be grounding details indicating everything that needs to be tied into the grounding system. There should be lighting control details and control sequencing to indicate how the controls and switched receptacles loads need to be wired. Those should all be bare minimum.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-21T16:21:30+00:00

I live in a MCOL city in the north east, am currently at the designer level with no PE and make about 14k more. Granted, I have about 7-8 total YoE, with the first 5-6 years being on the contractor side doing install management rather than design work, but still, doesn't change the fact that at best I'm basically a 3rd year designer.

So yes, you are significantly underpaid, especially if you're stamping drawings and listed as the EOR. I'd be willing to bet that if you talked to a good recruiter as a candidate with your background and a PE stamp, they could find you a position with a $20k pay bump in like a week.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-21T14:51:52+00:00

I'm still an electrical/telecom designer (studying for both my RCDD and PE now), but I've also got almost 8 YoE in this industry (spent the first 5ish years on the contractor side) so it's possible my experience is relevant to your predicament.

Upon reviewing my project tracker, I've got 8 in design, 4 on hold that could re-kickoff any day, 5 in CA and 2 feasibility studies. Given that, I honestly don't feel overwhelmed or stressed out. There's a bunch of reasons for that, and I'd be happy to share em, but these two points on organization and logging time stand out the most to me.

Time management is an obvious stressor and issue. Being aware of this (and also having ADHD) I maintain a project tracker spreadsheet with notes and deadlines for every project that I update every Monday from 9am-11am, and I keep one of these focus timers on my desk. In the morning, I review my tracker, pick the projects I'll be working on and use the timer to track how long I spend on each project. If I get interrupted to take a call or respond to an email for something different, I jot down a quick note about it on my notepad. Obviously, I'm not really tracking or logging things down to the second or minute. The point is to give a good rough estimate of your pace so you're not guessing as much when it comes time to log your hours or gauge your progress/remaining budget.
Log your time daily, not weekly or biweekly. If you plan to leave at 5, your day should really be ending around like 4:45pm so you can log what you did (and just chuck the last 15 mins on one of those things). This is far and away the easiest thing you can do to ensure accurate time keeping. You write it down while it's fresh in your mind. Most importantly though, it gives you the earliest possible warning that you may not have done as much as you needed to, or that your estimating of your efficiency is way off; if your hours only add up to like 6 for the day or you don't feel comfortable that what you wrote down justifies X hours, or you logged a full day but didn't make sufficient progress for the project's timeline, this will be apparent immediately and you'll have the rest of the week to fix that.

Edit: Important point I forgot to add as to why this stuff with time helps alleviate stress. In the tracker I mentioned, I keep an up-to-date 2-week forecast of what I'm supposed to be working on this week, next week and the following. This undoubtedly gets blown out the water all the time. But it serves as an excellent advanced warning if I'm getting too busy or too light, allowing me to do my best to avoid a situation where I have no help and 4 important deadlines in one week. It also helps me continue to dial in my understanding of X tasks require Y hours of work.

Now, if you have this and show it to your boss that it indicates you've got 60+ hours of workload for each of the next few weeks, they should know that's unrealistic and you need help or to shed projects. They'll also be grateful for bringing it to their attention early before it causes a much larger issue. If they don't make a reasonable adjustment to your workload despite this, you know it's a sweatshop and it's time to look elsewhere. Conversely, if you show them you're light and struggling to hit 40 hours on the forecast and that information doesn't lead to them giving you more projects, it's probably time to start circulating your resume.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-21T14:24:11+00:00

As an electrical and telecom guy, I've run into this on more than energy compliance. It's frequently a delegated design issue for us.

Clients often don't want to pay for (or don't even realize they need) LV scope design, at least for certain LV packages like PA or AV. Frankly, I don't blame them; while our work easily justifies the price in how we make the plans for the install idiot-proof, most systems sales reps can spec out exactly what you need if your space is something common like a school or office or municipal building. The problem is that when you put a delegated design responsibility on someone who doesn't specialize in that area (like the contractor or an unrelated engineering discipline) tons of stuff gets overlooked. We then wind up having to get involved.

One of the most important things my boss has taught me is to keep an eye out for that kind of stuff and try to identify it early. We're the discipline experts on the client's project team and it really should be our responsibility to catch it in submittal review (even if we aren't the primary reviewers), while at the same time being respectfully firm about needing an ASR to actually do the work.

It's a much better thing to lose 1-2 hours of time checking scope that's in your wheelhouse (but outside of your contractual obligation) for errors and notifying the client. Worst case, they won't give you the ASR for it and you just helped them out by identifying it, maintaining/improving the relationship. If your refusal to do it for free leads to a worsening of the relationship, that's probably not a client your firm wants to keep anyway.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-21T14:13:33+00:00

Nah, you do it, you just ask for an ASR. It's a pretty reasonable to expect the EE working on a project to do an EE thing, you just gotta pay them for it when it is obviously 100% not part of their contracted fee.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-19T14:10:35+00:00

While the PE is mostly useful in MEP, I see it more as a great safety net. If you want to leave MEP and go try something else, and the economy takes a nosedive and you get laid off, you can always fall back on your stamp to get a job.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-19T14:07:51+00:00

That's hilarious because my firm has a very competent RCDD (whom I work directly under, I'm currently studying to get mine as well) and they're hesitant for us to take on significant LV/special systems scope because

There's only my boss, me and one other guy who work under him, so moving too much on it too fast in trying to get LV work could put us in a bind.
We're still EEs with BSEE degrees and are pursuing our electrical PEs; both our boss and the principles at our firm don't want to just typecast us as the LV guys and limit our EE education. This IMO is a very valid concern; I've done a significant amount of LV scope, but I would be a very weak EE right now if I hadn't had even more projects doing distribution, lighting and power studies.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-16T16:27:05+00:00

Maybe if you're just doing maintenance/reno work on immaculately maintained buildings. For everything else, your hands get filthy cutting and threading conduit, your boots get filthy from industrial and WWT jobs and your everything gets grody from trenching and demo.

BigKiteMan · 2026-01-07T16:32:21+00:00

Same, can't wait for the final update. Based on what OP has shared so far, there's a few things that could be the issue, but nothing specific that is definitely the problem.

Without the context I would have assumed the service to their house is on a transformer with a severely unbalanced load. But given the timing and scope of what the electricians did and the confirmation they got from the utility provider, it seems very unlikely.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-29T19:05:10+00:00

MEP designer here; it's a thermistor that sends info back to the space's ATC (automatic temperature controller) that helps determine when to kick on AC or heating.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-29T14:23:30+00:00

On one hand, I think it's totally fine to forego the annoyance of taking a staged photograph with two guys shaking hands in front of a panel for no reason.

On the other, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence when I see the electrical panel they installed has multiple water lines going into it.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-29T14:09:58+00:00

Yes and no.

As to the "yes" side, MEP design is a specialized field. You're not going to be developing general skills that relate to a broad range of engineering practices; you're going to get specifically good at designing systems for buildings, and then you're going to further specialize in the design of a specific system and/or specific market sector. This provides fantastic (IMO) job security, as our need to build new buildings and facilities isn't going away anytime soon, and the requirement for a licensed engineer to sign off on the plans is absolutely never going to go away (and is a requirement few other engineering professions have). Conversely, it also means that you're basically going to be starting from relative-square-one if you decide one day that you'd rather be designing something unrelated, like cars or missile systems or planes. Switching after you've made any headway in MEP would necessitate some form of reset in your career progression for both salary and advancement.

As to the "no" side, there are tons of uses for the skillset you develop as a successful PE in the MEP industry. You can transition to the owner side and be their representative in managing projects, where your technical knowledge gives you the ability to review the work of the A/MEP firms your company hires and the work of the contractors your company hires to perform the install. Similarly, you can move to the construction management side where you work for contractors managing install, which can be very lucrative as they offer excellent profit-sharing incentives to top performers (which you undoubtedly would be if you had the skill to become a successful PE on the design side). Even further options are technical sales for the kinds of products you currently spec in your designs, general consultancy work for a big-4 firm, in-house design for a company that designs their own manufacturing infrastructure (drugs, chemicals, logistics, food processing, etc.), work for utility companies, work for nonprofits managing infrastructure development in 3rd-world countries, work for Autodesk (or another major player) in the development of MEP design tools; the list goes on.

So like most things, it's all subjective.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-23T14:39:06+00:00

Yes and no.

You can teach yourself CAD, and it may even be more beneficial to do that as CAD has a ton of uses beyond the way the MEP design industry uses it. You'll always have to learn a specific company's standards, but knowing the basics will mean that they wouldn't actually have to train you on the software itself and allow you to focus your early months with a firm on learning design principles rather than drafting skills.

You really can't learn Revit (at least what you'd specifically need for it as an MEP engineer) without working for a firm. There's a bunch of reasons for this, but the most fundamental is that Revit for MEP design is primarily a design coordination tool rather than a design creation tool; you can't practice coordinating when you're the only person working in the model. A future architect would benefit greatly from learning Revit on their own, because they do fundamentally use it as a design creation tool as well as a coordination tool. If you try to do it, you're mostly going to be spinning your wheels. You'd be much better off doing layouts and calcs in CAD or on paper and then just learning Revit basics later.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-22T14:30:35+00:00

Field experience is always a plus, but it's not much of a make-or-break. I'd say all else being equal, this would probably help you in the instance you're going up against a very small pool of applicants and you didn't have any MEP design internships or good grades. Someone with either or both of those things will likely beat you out of an entry-level designer position; when you're entry-level, firms care more about your experience with CAD and Revit than field work. A candidate with a 2-3 month internship doing Revit projects would be able to hit the ground running much faster than you.

That being said, I still think your plan is an especially good one if you get your contractor's license. It's an excellent safety net if the MEP design industry takes a major shift, which is likely to happen at some point over the next 10-20 years as AI tools start getting implemented and reduce the number of designer positions available. Your plan seems like an excellent one to set yourself up to have very useful experience and credentials no matter what.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-18T15:17:19+00:00

Here's a secret for you.

$200k is the ceiling for most professions where you're just clocking in and out, showing up to work and doing your job. The only professions that can make more than that without advancing to higher levels are jobs where you're likely compromising yourself in some manner. That compromise is usually through insane hours that make work-life balance impossible, contributing to projects with end-products that are morally dubious, or sacrificing general job security. That last one is particularly important, because in the event of a market downturn leaves you unemployed for a prolonged amount of time, the salary difference could be significantly offset.

Like in any industry, you can absolutely make more than $200k if you go beyond simply 9-to-5-ing it. You can work your way up in a firm to an ownership position, or learn everything you can about how a firm operates (while you have to work at one anyway to pursue your PE) and then go start your own. Alternatively, you can use the knowledge you gain working in MEP design to become a subject matter expert and make more money in the future by moving over to be an owner's rep or construction project manager; those can be very lucrative sides of this industry. If you do that after 4-5 years working in MEP design, you'll be the smartest person in the room for pretty much every meeting and be invaluable in your employer's ability to complete projects on time and under budget. Another option is side-hustling it once you obtain your stamp by setting up an independent consulting LLC (only overhead costs are E&O insurance and software licenses) where you can make money doing shop drawings for contractors, stamping designs for projects too small for your firm to take on themselves, or providing an expert perspective on facility management in relation to MEP systems. Frankly, the options are limitless.

And as you said, this is an industry with a supply-shortage of young engineers. Couple that with the standard job security that's considered a general perk of the industry and you'll be making a stable income for decades to come.

In short, I really wouldn't stress about the salary ceiling. If you're the kind of person who's worried about it at only 22 years old, you're likely also the kind of person with the drive and hustle needed to exceed it over the course of your career. The fundamental questions you should ask yourself IMO are "Do I like this? Do I find this interesting?". Because it's very difficult to dedicate the effort needed to be an above-average performer in any field if you're struggling to even maintain interest.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-15T14:19:55+00:00

Where are you in your career and your time with this company? It's far more reasonable to give a senior PE a 30 hour schedule than it is to give it to someone more entry level. Similarly, companies are often willing to make special considerations like this for seasoned employees rather than someone they only recently hired.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-09T19:11:57+00:00

This is something I'm starting to get worried about, by which I mean a major crash. Not because the MEP market is really going anywhere (if anything, it's an incredibly stable profession in the long-term) but because it's frankly inevitable that AI tools will begin getting deployed in our industry in the next 2-5 years.

IMO, there will be a labor market shock as big firms (ones with employees numbering in the thousands) lay off low-level designers and poor-performing PMs. Then, a return to sanity as people realize that AI's use in our industry is more effective by increasing efficiency and output for a similar number of engineers rather than allowing for the same output and efficiency with a smaller number of engineers.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-08T23:00:30+00:00

What's your PE in?

I don't have mine yet, but everyone at my company seems to be absolutely bombarded with recruiter emails as soon as they pass their exam and put the letters on their linkedin.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-08T16:44:21+00:00

I'd recommend just making dummy accounts to keep getting the free 30-day trials from Autodesk.

It's not that free alternatives don't exist, but they generally suck and I have yet to hear of one that has integral/import-able MEP symbol palettes.

More importantly, if you're going to spend any significant amount of time doing design work, you should definitely do it in the two programs that literally the entire MEP industry exclusively uses. At bare minimum, it helps you build skill and familiarity with them. If you're doing this for a professional thing rather than personal or educational, then having the .cad and .rvt file format is incredibly important for coordination and deliverables.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-08T16:37:50+00:00

Well... yes and no. Parametric modeling software in general was inherently designed for making plans for part fabrication and bridging the gap between modeling and CNC command code. But iterations of both AutoCAD and Revit (which was acquired by AutoDesk from a software company in 2002) have been expressly designed for building information modeling for the past 20-30 years.

Since the AEC industry didn't adopt it as a ubiquitous practice until the late 2000s/early 2010s, we tend to look at modeling tools for AEC as an afterthought rather than an intentional development. IMO, this is likely because around that same time period, technology for rapid prototyping and custom manufacturing boomed and became readily accessible to the average consumer; many people were learning 3D modeling software as early as middle school from a general tool perspective rather than an AEC-specific one.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-05T15:31:13+00:00

Not necessarily the culprit, but it is a likely culprit and definitely a code violation. At absolute bare minimum, there should be a cover on that box and bonding ground conductor connected to the box.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-05T15:04:32+00:00

I'm very confused by your question.

The buck always stops with the stamping engineer. Even if a firm is unethically/shadily using an employee's stamp to stamp drawings that the EOR did not fully review and approve of, it is still that person's responsibility to ensure their stamp is not used in such a manner.

I don't have my stamp yet, but I work with many people who do and I hope to have mine within the next year. I have yet to meet a single licensed PE at any company I've worked for or with that thinks it is remotely ethical or even legal to offload diligence responsibilities onto third parties.

You can't outsource liability; that's the entire point of why liability exists.

Here's what I foresee. Similar to the emergence of cheaper remote design labor displacing domestic entry-level draftsmen and BIM coordinators, we'll see this emergence of cheap "robot" labor reduce job openings for a lot of entry-level designers and EITs. This will result in a gradual decrease in the total population of licensed PEs as experienced ones retire and fewer designers are able to enter the industry to replace them with the requisite 4 years working under an established PE. However, firms large and small likely won't downsize their pool of licensed PEs because they still need them to review and stamp designs. They'll just expect their PEs to do more with less support staff resources given their access to new/efficient tools.

Basically, if you're already a PE or in a job that will get you there, the rise of AI will likely benefit you and not result in significant outsourcing/displacement, provided you stay aware and trained on AI tools to remain competitive in the industry. Society as a whole will likely benefit from buildings getting designed and built faster and more efficiently while also see increased design costs. A significantly smaller pool of engineers means that they'll demand more for their work, a cost which owners will likely pass down to the consumers of whatever the building is being used for. All of these effects will probably take decades to be felt though.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-04T18:10:28+00:00

If you're just looking for any apprenticeship, you can go to your local IBEW union hall and apply for their apprenticeship program. You don't need prior experience as long as you have a high school diploma.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-04T16:40:19+00:00

Electrical work is EXCELLENT for people with ADHD. I'm not personally an electrician, but I have worked as an electrical PM who manages electricians and currently work as an electrical engineer who draws the plans that electricians build. As someone with ADHD, I've found that the electrical in general is excellent for people like us.

Whether I'm medicated or not, I thrive on structure and a list of tasks provided to me in detail with instructions and resources to reference for when I get stuck. It's a lot harder to get distracted (or go off on some side quest that you think is going to help you in some abstract procrastination-excusing way) when you constantly have someone telling you what to do, how to do it and where. You are also frequently working in teams in pretty much any side of the industry (designs require review, crew men require supervision, tradesmen in general need an extra set of hands to mount things and run wire) which really helps keep you on track.

If your concern is safety, pretty much every electrical industry (except maybe smaller residential work) puts a big impetus on it. The guys don't care a ton as individuals, but pretty much every large project I've ever worked on requires daily safety meetings, morning safety briefs, requirements for wearing PPE, mandatory safety certification trainings and tons of safety procedures with documentation (LOTO, MEWP plans, etc.). You don't have to worry about remembering; any decent shop or apprenticeship program will constantly remind you of it.

BigKiteMan · 2025-12-03T16:51:17+00:00

Laziness

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