Commissioning Engineer

About the Role

This role involves receiving and managing project assignments, monitoring the master commissioning schedule, obtaining current project drawings, participating in project meetings, constructability reviews, and engineering walkdowns, and communicating major changes involving outage dates, issued-for-construction dates, sequencing, or equipment delivery.

Responsibilities

• Review one-line and three-line diagrams, schematics, revision blocks, special notes, protection specifications, and SCADA points lists.
• Challenge the design, compare proposed work with existing station conditions, identify errors or protection impacts, and promptly escalate conditions that could affect safety, testing, switching, or energization.
• Develop and maintain project commissioning checklists.
• Prepare or review isolation plans that identify affected cables and conductors, termination points, source ends, conductor functions, and the safest approved isolation methods; distribute applicable plans and checklists to field leadership and testing personnel.
• Develop energization plans and equipment release lists; coordinate with outage planning personnel to prepare and finalize switching orders; review protection that will be removed from service; verify equipment labeling; and confirm that required clearances, INFO Orders, switching controls, and related requests are in place.
• Provide on-site technical oversight throughout commissioning.
• Document project activities, maintain project records, resolve design or installation questions with engineering, protection, contractors, vendors, manufacturers, and operations personnel, and obtain required approval before field revisions are made.
• Perform or oversee CT circuit checks, relay and programmable-device setting reviews, relay hardening verification, disturbed-node functional testing, reclosing and fault-injection testing, end-to-end relay testing, and validation of SCADA, EMS, alarms, controls, analog values, indications, communications, and metering.
• Coordinate completion and signoff of the pre-energization checklist; obtain preload readings and EMS screenshots; verify phasing, load angles, differential quantities, CT/PT circuits, and in-service metering; release equipment for test and service; and complete closeout documentation, redlines, transmittals, and required post-energization follow-up.

Qualifications

• High school diploma or GED plus one of the following: associate or bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Electrical Engineering Technology, Power Systems, or a related field; completion of a three- to five-year electrician apprenticeship program; or completion of a qualifying U.S. Army Prime Power Production or U.S. Navy Nuclear program with relevant hands-on electrical equipment experience.
• Five or more years of field service engineering, testing, commissioning, protection and control, or substation experience involving both protective relays and substation apparatus.
• Valid U.S. driver's license and acceptable driving history, with the ability to satisfy customer site-access requirements, background screening, and drug and alcohol testing requirements.

Skills

• High proficiency with commissioning and test equipment such as Doble, Omicron, Megger, Vanguard, and Arbiter equipment; experience with relay testing software and end-to-end testing is strongly preferred.
• Advanced ability to read and troubleshoot one-line diagrams, three-line diagrams, protection and control schematics, wiring diagrams, and equipment drawings; working knowledge of CT/PT circuits, protective relays, programmable devices, AC/DC station service, SCADA, EMS, communications, metering, and switching practices.
• Familiarity with applicable utility procedures and industry standards, including ANSI/NETA, IEEE, NFPA, NEC, and UL.
• NETA or NICET certification and OSHA 30 training are preferred or may be required by the client assignment.

Schedule

This is a full-time, field-based position. Work hours vary based on project schedules, outages, switching, testing, and energization requirements. The employee must be able to work a flexible schedule, including overtime, extended shifts, nights, weekends, and off-shift assignments when required.

Travel is required up to 85% and may occur on a weekly or bi-weekly interstate basis. When assigned to a single project, the utility project site may become the employee's primary reporting location for the duration of the assignment.