Industrial Plant Engineer

Career Area: Engineering

Occupation Group: Mechanical and Related Engineers

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Industrial Plant Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $83,264

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $83,214

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Plans, designs, installs, and maintains industrial production plant facilities. Estimates production costs and performs feasibility studies in order to advise management on investment in new plants.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Industrial Plant Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting or dpanneuring is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Repair: Restoration of a broken, damaged, or failed device, equipment, part, or property to an acceptable operating or usable condition or state.
• Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
• Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
• Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.
• HVAC: Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) is the technology of indoor and vehicular environmental comfort.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Industrial Plant Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Medical Gas Systems: Medical gas supply systems in hospitals, and most other healthcare facilities, are essential for supplying piped oxygen, nitrous oxide, nitrogen/surgical air, carbon dioxide, oxygen/nitrous oxide 50/50, medical vacuum, anaesthetic gas scavenge/waste anesthetic gas disposal and medical air to various parts of the facility.
• Lean Manufacturing: Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply lean, is a systematic method for waste minimization (Muda) within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity.
• Process Control: Process control is an engineering discipline that deals with architectures, mechanisms and algorithms for maintaining the output of a specific process within a desired range.
• Total productive maintenance: Working experience of Total productive maintenance, which is a system of maintaining and improving the integrity of production and quality systems through the machines, equipment, processes, and employees that add business value to an organization.
• Process Engineering: Process engineering focuses on the design, operation, control, optimization and Intensification of chemical, physical, and biological processes.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Process Control: Process control is an engineering discipline that deals with architectures, mechanisms and algorithms for maintaining the output of a specific process within a desired range.
• Equipment Effectiveness: Experience in reliability engineering, performing stress tests, and measuring the effectiveness of equipment against a defined standard.
• Ethanol: Ethanol, also called alcohol, ethyl alcohol, and drinking alcohol, is the principal type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Plant Engineer
• Plant Engineer II
• Senior Plant Engineer
• Run Plant Engineer
• Plant Utilities Engineer

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Production Engineer
• Facilities Engineering Manager
• Industrial Economic Engineer
• Industrial Engineering Manager
• Industrial Engineer
• Agriculture & Food Engineering Manager
• Maintenance Group Leader