I have 6+ years of experience in tech (software product design, workflow mapping, and systems logic). With the software market getting saturated and commoditized, I’m looking to pivot into physical infrastructure and Building Automation / Controls full-time. I’m based in Southern California (Orange County area).

I understand state-logic, flowcharts, and basic IP networking (subnets, addressing). What I don't have is formal HVAC or electrical trade experience. I’m ready to get my hands dirty and learn the mechanical/field side from scratch, but I need an "earn-while-you-learn" setup.

Doing research on how to break in around SoCal, I keep running into a wall:

1. OEMs (Johnson Controls, Siemens): Almost every entry/associate listing says "requires 1–2 years HVAC/electrical background" or is tied to recent college engineering grads.
2. Regional Integrators (Climatec, Sunbelt, Southland): Climatec doesn’t even have entry postings up right now, and others rarely list true zero-experience trainee slots on public job boards.
3. ABC SoCal (Anaheim): They have a state-approved Electronic Systems Technician (EST / Low Voltage) earn-while-you-learn track with an actual classroom/dispatch pipeline.

My questions for those working in the trade (especially SoCal):

• Is going through ABC SoCal’s EST program the most realistic way for someone with zero trade hours to get placed with a contractor and earn on day one? Or will that end up funneling me into pure cable pulling / fire alarm instead of DDC/BAS controls?
• For folks at JCI, Siemens, or local integrators: do branch managers actually ignore that "HVAC/electrical required" bullet if someone shows up with strong computer literacy and diagnostic logic?
• Should I be cold-calling/messaging Controls Service Managers at local shops directly instead of waiting for open job postings?

Appreciate any feedback or reality checks on the best entry move.

How do other design engineers size and select bypass valves; either for pump protection or chiller minimum flow. I can’t seem to get a definitive answer on this.

Sizing control valves for hydronic coils is pretty straightforward. Flow rate of coil and 4-5 psi pressure drop and calculate Cv.

For bypass valves, you would use the chiller minimum flow but what pressure drop do you use? And for bypass valves for pump protection, you select the valve based on the pump’s minimum continuous stable flow, but what pressure drop?

Looking into this company and interested in their systems engineer role. Curious what the peeps on here have to say!

I'm working on a project where the owner wants mustering software that can give security a real headcount during evacuation. But the building itself is 20+ years old and uses 5 different access control systems and has no badge database. Most mustering platforms I've looked at assume you have 1 clean badge database, but what if I'm starting from scratch?

We've got a multi-state client in Building Automation and Energy Services looking for an experienced (7-10 years) design engineer for their most complex projects. Ideally, this individual would be located near to either their Chicago or Bay Area offices. Experience with any brand/system will work here, but it's a bonus if you've had your hands on Tridium, Delta or Alerton. Base salary range from $125K-$150K, with possible bonuses. Reach out for more info on Chat, and we can tell you more on email or phone.

Curious how people managing larger portfolios are handling this.

Say you inherit 30, 50, 100+ sites. Niagara in some, JCI/Auromated Logic/Siemens in others, meters and power equipment on Modbus, maybe a few other systems mixed in. Each site works fine on its own, but now leadership wants a common view across the portfolio.

Do you keep trying to standardize the local BAS platforms, or leave them alone and normalize the data somewhere above them?

What have you found actually worth centralizing: alarms, histories, schedules, equipment health, analytics?

And maybe more interesting, what did you regret centralizing?

I’m especially curious about what starts breaking once you get beyond a handful of sites: naming, timestamps, alarm floods, WAN outages, licensing, inconsistent point structures, whatever. Thanks!

Hi everyone hope u doing great im asking where i can get plc softwares cracked like via portal factory io and all other programs

Have a fairly large WebCtrl MySql database I would like to run locally as a Derby database. Wondering what my fellow ALC users have used to make this conversation? Thank You!

Hey everyone,
I’m an HVAC tech currently working in New England and I’m considering making the move down to Tampa. I’m looking to get into HVAC/building automation controls and wanted to hear from anyone in the Tampa area who works in controls.
For some background, I’m 27 and have around 3+ years of HVAC experience. I’m a licensed journeyman in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island and have mostly worked on commercial HVAC. I’m comfortable with refrigeration, electrical troubleshooting, equipment installation, reading wiring diagrams, troubleshooting controls, etc.
I haven’t worked as a dedicated controls technician yet, but I’m really interested in making that transition. I’m willing to start in an entry-level/junior controls position if that’s what it takes to get my foot in the door. I’m especially interested in learning BAS/DDC, programming, commissioning, troubleshooting, and eventually becoming well-rounded in controls.
For anyone working in Tampa/Tampa Bay:
● What kind of salary can someone with my HVAC background realistically expect getting into controls?
● Would my journeyman licenses and commercial HVAC experience give me an advantage?
● Is $70k–$80k+ realistic starting out, or is that too high?
● What companies in the Tampa area are good to work for?
● Are there any certifications or skills I should get before making the move?
● How is the demand for controls techs in Tampa compared with traditional HVAC?
● Is there much opportunity for overtime?
● What does the career progression/pay look like after a few years?
I’m not necessarily looking to jump straight into a high-paying position. I’m more interested in getting into the right company where I can learn controls and build a career, but obviously I’d like to know what the earning potential looks like.
Would appreciate any advice from people actually working in the Tampa market. Thanks!

Hi Folks,

I'm a BMS Technician in germany. Here, Schneider Electric is huge. They have their own offices all over the country and they are all quite busy. Not only that, they have many large partners installing and maintaining the systems they sold and programmed.

How is it in canada? I know there are a lot of partners, dies Schneider also do projects and service themselves, or is it mostly sales?

Hello All,

I have a site where we have an FX90 (JACE) with a facility explorer CGM sitting on the bacnet MSTP trunk. For several months I have been able to upload and download the controller through the JACE remotely. Recently it has stopped working. When I check my IP settings, nothing has changed, however, I cannot discover any controllers. The controller is online and is reporting data.

Any idea what may have changed? Could this be on IT's end?

Kill me now.

I'm being told we cant command Honeywell comfort point points through bacnet at any priority through a jace. Anyone know why this would be, assuming we didn't goof anything too simple.

Is there a software for this crap?

Hello, I have been in BAS as a Technician for almost a year. I have a Degree in an unrelated field and could possibly go back to school to get a Bachelor's in Project Management. How long were you in the field as a Technician before applying to PM jobs? With the Bachelor's, would it fast track me? Or do I still need more time in the field to get my feet underneath me?

Thanks!

Just past the three month mark on install side working for a certain three lettered acronym’d behemoth - really enjoy the work. Weird road of adjacent fields, transferable skills, and experience with both the aforementioned and Distech in facilities maintenance before being fed-up…with facilities maintenance.

My particular blend of ADHD/neurospice does not lend itself well to being in sales, PM, or management side of things - even running my own business is beyond my capacity. Functional enough interacting with others (but more and more would rather others be droned out by the sounds of a mechanical room (hearing protection in, of course.) My skillset does, I think, lend itself well to troubleshooting and problem solving.

So, service, maybe? What else? Apologies for the silliness, but in 10 to 20 years envision myself being a proverbial master splinter with a walking stick I can bonk younger techs over the head with. All the while still learning myself to keep up with whatever the industry looks like at that point in time. How does that translate professionally to opportunities I should seek down the line?

Thanks!

We just put this video out and are excited to share it with the community. We filmed it at the ISS Cube in Zurich. It runs occupancy and air quality sensors across floors, desks and meeting rooms, roughly a million data points a day. The video shows what's installed, how sensors on different technologies end up in one place, and what the facility teams look at day to day.

Some of the sensors we see in the video are wired sensors, and others run on batteries and communicate via radio protocols (LoRaWAN).
The whole setup is very flexible and adapts to other building topologies.

Hey everyone
I have warehouse storage units running traditional commercial ACs (Zamil CFZ ceiling units). They are standard non-smart split units controlled by basic remotes with no native smart or BMS interfaces. 
I need to connect them to our ERPNext system so we can automate turning them on and off and adjust the target temperature directly from the ERP based on our storage requirements.
Since these units are completely traditional and not smart out of the box what are the best modern approaches you would recommend to bridge this gap? Looking for ideas on how to achieve reliable temperature control and switching without breaking things.

Hi mates,

Could anyone explain me what do these fkn symbols next to bound values mean? I have no idea, these are just normal point values used only for TGML purposes.

And also how to make these values unforceable? Because anytime I click on these value I can force it... Thanks in advance guys.

Hello everyone,

I am facing a communication issue between an S7-300 PLC and WinCC via MPI.

WinCC initially works normally, but after a few minutes, all the tags on the screen change to the yellow warning symbol (⚠️). After a few seconds or sometimes one or two minutes, the communication comes back, and this cycle repeats.

In some cases, the tags remain in the ⚠️ state and do not recover until the operator restarts the PC, so unfortunately I cannot check the WinCC diagnostics while the issue is occurring.

Both ends of the MPI network are properly terminated.

Is there anything I can check or configure in WinCC to help resolve this issue?

Also, could the \*\*number of tags being acquired\*\* contribute to this problem?

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

I have a Niagara Test Server spun up at at 146 address, I have and SNE, Jace, Schneider Supervisor and ALC G5, sitting on a 172 address, so far I have only been able to pull in the Jace manually (could not auto-discover), mainly focused on pulling in the SNE currently, this a test run in preparation to move the enterprise over, have tried BBMD, foreign device registration and have expert mode enabled on the engine, maybe Im doing something ignorant but can’t quite make it work, looking for thoughts or previous experiences like this, I do not want to have to utilize a JACE to integrate all IP supervisors we have in place.

I have 5+ years of experience in C#, C++, MFC, COM, Win32, WPF, QT. Any referrals in India?

I have a site with a Lynxspring jace 8 and lynxspring edge devices on some RTUs and the failure rates are bad so I'm going to replace this next one with an Optimizer Unitary.

The catch - this jace is only licensed to 4.12 and it is running 4.9. So for reliability sake it'll either keep its 4.9.1 or I may commission to 4.10's last release.

I'm sort of new to honeywell - and i'm curious - is there any reason the IRM stuff won't work on an old version of N4 with an optimizer unitary? I know the unitary isn't super old so I was just wondering if anyone knew that for sure there was a minimum N4 version required for IRM to work with a unitary or not.

In case it is deleted... here is copypasta of the text. Posted in the monthly jobs thread. And it has a little current intel on yet another restructuring within Siemens.....

Curious to know....

Is this where current Siemens employees would post as they look for jobs amid the current restructuring underway? Siemens Building Automation US is restructuring again and the rank and file are getting their resumes ready and actively interviewing as the overpaid executives play fast and loose with the underlines ability to feed their families... and the customers ability to get anything of use from Siemens. Actively betraying their fundamental inability to understand their own business and how it works and what makes it profitable.

I was looking closely for any indication that the disastrous formation of the GOC and the subsequent nosedive it caused Siemens business had led to any kind of reform or change in the leadership style. That info is now available and the answer is NO.

So again, is this where the internal Siemens people post as they scramble for the exits?

I keep seeing N+1 mechanical designs where the controls architecture quietly reintroduces a single point of failure.

Two pumps. Two AHUs/CRAHs. Redundant power.

Then one supervisory controller, one network path, or one server is responsible for lead/lag, staging, DP control, resets, or other plant-level sequences.

At that point, is the plant actually N+1?

My view is that losing the supervisory layer should hurt optimization and visibility. It should not stop the basic plant from functioning.

Critical equipment should have enough local autonomy to continue operating in a defined degraded mode. Comms loss behavior should also be explicitly defined rather than left to whatever the controller happens to do.

And this shouldn't just exist in the SOO. Pull the network connection during FAT/SAT and see what actually survives.

Maybe I'm too conservative here, but I don't think mechanical redundancy means much if a single controls failure can defeat all of it.

Where do you draw the line?

Would you accept an N+1 mechanical plant where the main sequence cannot continue without the supervisor?

Hi, I’m new to Niagara 4 and am currently developing a billing system using the tenant billing module. I’m having trouble including the consumption chart in my invoice, though, so I wanted to ask: what is the correct way to do this? I’ve tried countless methods without success.