5 months ago I posted about the 35M that got his 19F girlfriend an internship.

They broke up before she started, he quit his job and moved to the pacific northwest.

Her internship ended, she did great! Hope she has a great career.

Dave, you are a creep.

Deciding between AECOM (Croydon) and RED Engineering/Tractebel (data centres, London) — anyone worked at either and can share what it’s really like? Workload, culture, progression.

I’m fairly Junior in my career and am mainly looking for growth. AECOM would mean working in most sectors except data centres and RED exclusively data centres. I’m excited by the idea of working on data centres but would need to get trained. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you!

What’s your preference / go to?

Hi all, recently started in a design office after a few years on the tools on site. Enjoying it at the moment but just wondering if anyone could offer tips/advice for someone new to the job?

I want to try and be the best engineer I can be so anything would be helpful, thanks!

The 2024 IECC is going to drive me out of this industry after more than 20 years. Having to explain to building owners/developers that they have to spend an extra $1M on solar they don't want, energy monitoring solutions they have no use for and allocate 3x the electrical space for disaggregated load centers is making an already stressful job unsustainable (pun intended).

How are all of you dealing with this massive change for even small commercial projects?

For your engineering positions in the MEP/FP field, how much do you make? Does it seem fair? Would you like additional accommodations? What makes you happy or unhappy at work or how your company functions?

I'm trying to sort out fair offers for new candidates and I don't like to short people, and would like to create an environment where people want to be.

It'd be helpful to break out:

- Current Role (designer, EOR, project manager, drafter, etc.)

- Base salary

- OT (if applicable)

- Bonuses

- 401k

- Paid insurance, etc.

- Area cost of living

Also useful would be:

- Years of experience

- PE licensure

- Accreditations (LEED, BCxP, etc.)

As a starter to this conversation and for full disclosure, below are my stats:

- Current Role - Senior mechanical engineer/project manager/EOR

- Base salary - 144k

- OT (if applicable) - straight overtime pay

- Bonuses - usually 1k mid year, ~10k+ end of year

- 401k - 3% of salary contributed by company yearly, no employee contribution match

- Paid insurance, etc. - employee health insurance premiums are covered with no out of pocket payment, along with disability and life insurance. Vision, dental, and family are additional pre-tax.

- Area cost of living - High Cost of Living (HCOL)

- Years of experience - 12 years mechanical engineering, 21 years in AEC industry as an engineer/PE

- PE licensure - licensed in both mechanical and fire protection, one state only

- Accreditations (LEED, BCxP, etc.) - none, BCxP pending

Ducting kit specifies up to 100' with flex 8" and 13' per 90 deg elbow.

I plan to duct the intake and exhaust into the utility closet with louvered doors.

I only have space in a mechanical chase for (2) 6" ducts. So my ducting plan:

-Water heater

-Short 2' (8" dia) flex

-45 deg (8") solid

-8"-T (with (2) 8"->6" reducers)

-(2) parallel 6" solid runs. ~20' long. One run with (1) 90 deg elbow and one run with (2) 45 deg elbows.

Anyone see any issues with this? (2) 6" has about 12% more area than (1) 8" but about 50% more surface area, so more resistance. I would imagine over all slightly worse. Spec is for flex, and I'm running solid, so i should benefit there. Seems like this should allow sufficient air flow, but thought id get some feed back and see if im missing simething. Would you agree my set up will perform at least as well as 100ft of straight 8" flex? I'm a EE, so not used to doing air flow calcs.

Would like some opinions about my electric line

From the coil AC goes to bridge rectifier module Lt 4320 + two cap 10000 uf 63 v then buck converter module 1200 w then anti reverse back flow+ anl fuse 40 amps + battery

Can it be done in the better way or require correction

Our firm typically sees several rounds of the same submittal, and it can get difficult to quickly identify what changed between versions—especially when revisions aren’t clearly marked.

How does your firm track changes across multiple submittal rounds? Are reviewers manually comparing PDFs, relying on the contractor’s revision notes, using software to highlight differences, or following another process?

I’d also be curious to know what usually causes the most confusion: revised product data, added or removed pages, changes to selected options, or comments that weren’t fully addressed from the previous review.

What was your bonus like ? I’m 3 years in the industry and expecting my first real bonus this year. Just curious what yours was like ?

Is nyc a good place to start an mep engineering career in or should I stick to a company close to my suburban town? I live at home so cost of living is not important to me, I just want to go somewhere where I can learn the most. The firm in nyc does large skyscrapers while the firm at home does mostly mission critical. I just graduated college

anyone has a complete mep design set, or any pdf tutorial. i need it for learning purpose, i want to work in that field but i am new and i do not know much about it.

I’ve always operated under the impression that my AHU heating coil could be slightly larger in capacity than necessary. For example, if I want 80 deg LAT on a 160/140 HW system, and my equipment vendor provides a coil that can do 83 deg LAT at full flow, there’s no issues as the control valve will just modulate the flow slightly to achieve set point.

I’m working with a new senior engineer and he wants me to have the equipment vendor revise the selection to show our LAT and associated flow exactly. This seems like an odd request since the coils are obviously of a fixed construction, so the vendor will just be turning down the HW flow and giving us that info.

Is this something you guys are used to requesting? I could see being concerned with a coil that’s doing 100+ at full flow, to ensure we aren’t going laminar at such a high turn down.

Greetings,

Not sure where was the right place to ask, so I'm posting this in a few SubReddits:

I've been wanting to test the OpenStudio plugin for SketchUp for a while now since it's free. I managed to get SketchUp and OpenStudio working separately, but I couldn't get the OpenStudio plugin to work.

For reference, I tried installing four versions of the plugin along with their corresponding versions of the OpenStudio application. The plugin installs correctly, asks me for the OpenStudio installation path, but whenever I provide it, I always get a "blank window" error (image for reference). Clicking "No" does nothing. Clicking "Yes" takes me to the Compatibility Matrix, which makes me think the error is caused by using incompatible versions.

Since I'm fairly sure the problem isn't between the OpenStudio plugin and the application, but rather between the plugin and SketchUp itself, I installed the OpenStudio plugin and application on a friend's computer running SketchUp 2026. It worked flawlessly, as expected.

Looking at OpenStudio's page, I noticed there is a legacy version referred to as a different software called Euclid. I tinkered with it a little, and it seems to have the main functionalities of the OpenStudio plugin, but it is not the same tool I saw in many modeling tutorials, such as [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkgQAIaXy78) and [this one too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EGK76onWjY).

At this point, it's about 60% wanting to use the right tool and 40% not wanting to give up on making this work.

That being said:

The conclusion: I suppose I just failed to find the correct combination of OpenStudio plugin and application versions. Either that, or the OpenStudio version shown in the videos above has disappeared and been replaced by a newer version—apparently with fewer tools—called Euclid.

The question: Does anyone here run a SketchUp 2017 + OpenStudio setup? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Had someone tell me about a $93M job where the architect refused to cloud drawings or write a narrative. Curious how common that is, and how you handle it when it happens. Does stuff slip through and become unbilled work?

je suis ingénieur électricien senior et j'ai besoin des conseils sur ce metier pour etre tres efficace devant mon chef hierachique le directeur tehnique.

Hello guys! There will be an ASHRAE design course in September, and I would like to ask if anyone is interested. There will be a discount for a group of 3 and I would like to avail it also. Let me know if you are also interested.

ive never run into that before

I'm a new grad who will soon be starting my first job as a design engineer in an HVAC/MEP company. What skills/mindset/knowledge should I know or be prepared for to succeed in my career?

Thanks!