The Story of Ali G and PCE LLC

I decided to share my work story:

I went to high school on the Big Island of Hawaii. I took a lot of Advanced Placement classes especially in math and science because I was pretty good at it. I applied to two colleges and was accepted to both but neither of them were in Hawaii. I ended up going to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. I majored in chemical engineering and minored in technical Spanish. I graduated in May of 2010 with no prospects for a job and a 2.64 GPA. The job market was pretty bad especially for fresh engineers out of college. I moved in with my parents who had moved from Hawaii to Phoenix while I was still going to Rose. I tutored for money at that point through a website called Wyzant.com, I didn’t even have a car because it had been repossessed in college. My mom would drive me to my “jobs” and I would teach people whatever they wanted to pay to learn; mainly math and science topics. I met a lot of ASU students that way because I lived so close to Tempe, AZ.

One day I got a call from a third party staffing company that wanted to know if I wanted to be a contract “research associate”. When I looked into it, it ended up being a job in Tucson for a medical device company but they didn’t want me to be an engineer they needed a material compatibility specialist. So that’s what I did. I moved to Tucson with no car and a bike and decided I’d try out the contractor life at $17 an hour.  

I worked in a nice lab, I worked for PhD scientists in their biochemical labs testing out mechanical component’s resistance to various reagents. I created the chemical compatibility charts for their custom reagents. I did that until I found a job in algae where I finally got to be an engineer.

My first Engineering job was process engineer for the capitol projects group in an algae start up. What was so unique about the opportunity was at the time I helped them build a greenfield plant in the land across the street. It was in this job that I commissioned my first control loop’s but I was on the valve side just verifying the correct valves really were open or closed. I also got my first taste for coordinating contractors on a process construction project. I was to handle the controls and electrical and I would help my mechanical counterpart show the plumbers and mechanical contractors where I stored all the equipment I procured. I learned how companies buy equipment and how the vendors sell it. I learned a lot of new piping methods and a lot about P&IDs. I kept the equipment lists and they were all cross referenceable with the P&ID tags.

My transition to controls came after 3 and a half years as a process engineer. I went to work for a huge systems integrator that was teaching people how to be controls engineers and control system specialists from scratch.

I left that job as a programmer to be a field controls engineer. I worked for an OEM and was tasked with a lot of new things that helped me grow. I had to make my own HMI screens, write PLC code from scratch, make P&IDs from scratch, design control panels in AutoCAD, travel the country to start up equipment and perform IO checkout. I even installed VFDs and did machine wiring both in the shop and in the field. The thing about IO checkout that makes it invaluable is that nobody is going to make it work but you, even though you may not have wired it or even installed the equipment. At that point its on you to make the equipment actually run and make it run safely and right…that’s huge. You can hand over a system when its been verified for safety, you have trained the operators and they feel comfortable with you walking away…

My next opportunity came to run my own UL508a shop and I had to take it. I had one builder and one engineer and I would design control panels, perform FATs, program PLCs, HMIs and VFDs, specify instrumentation and coordinate with the machine production team to make sure I had a panel ready by the time the builders had a machine built on the shop floor. I also learned all about classified hazardous locations because my panels were actually UL698a certified as well. Before I took the position the company did not have a UL E file number. I went through the training and became their UL gatekeeper, making them a UL certified panel shop.

I then went back to work for the OEM I had previously worked but I didn’t last long before I decided to finally move to the PNW which had been a goal of mine since I first vacationed there in 2014. The senior controls position I took helped me strengthen my proposal skills both for programming work and for electrical design work.

In July of 2021 I quit my job and decided to full time focus on my business that I had formed in 2018. I called it “Process & Controls Engineering LLC” and finally opened a bank account for it.

I have a few clients now and they might as well be my family because the love is there. If you love what you do, you might find you do it more easily 😉

This is the story of my woman-owned controls engineering firm. But the story is far from over…Cheers to 2022 and beyond!