Professional and Career Topics

I'm currently undergoing a training to become an NFRC Certified Simulator because I do a decent amount of thermal & optical simulation for fenestration systems and will likely be asked to stamp those results when I get my PE. I mostly wanted to have the certification for my own peace of mind that I'll be qualified to stamp that type of work, and to learn what I can through the training process, but I don't think I'll actually ever use the certification directly since it's more intended for people who work at accredited window rating labs than it is for people doing preliminary or custom analysis like myself. I imagine it'll be pretty industry specific but I'm curious, do you have any certifications or licenses that you don't directly use but found valuable to pursue nonetheless, and what kind of value have they provided? 

Hey Renn,

That seems very responsible and forward thinking of you to pursue this certification considering that you may one day need to stamp things where that type of work has been performed. 

Personally, with a background in water, I have considered a few certs or licenses that I'd like to look into more "one day". For me, these include the PMP, LEED Accreditation, D.WRE, or Certified Water Professional (CWP)  accreditations. 

I would also like to go a whole different route and take more programming courses. This might not lead to a certification (and I wouldn't be disappointed if it didn't) - but there have been many times in my career where a task has been stalled due to my lack of knowledge in the world of R and Python and I've had to go bother a programmer for assistance. 

The PMP was also one I looked into a bit, but since I primarily work under project managers I don't think I'll be pursuing it any time soon. 

I could definitely use some programming classes as well, one of my coworkers makes the niftiest automations for AutoCAD but there's always something I'd like to tweak about them since we do different work day to day. It's pretty high on my list to figure out how to make those for myself!