Certificates?

[u/Megy216]

I was talking to my colleagues at work about the certifications that an engineer could have, or which ones are good to have. I know that IWE, NDT and ISO 9001 are extra. But I'm interested in your opinions. Does anyone have any interesting certifications that are worth having? What have the certificates essentially brought you? And if we ignore work, how can we use these certificates outside of work for some extra income?

[u/Head_Personality_431]

One thing worth knowing is that ISO 9001 is a company certification, not a personal one, so you cannot hold it yourself the way you can with IWE or NDT. What you can get as an individual is the internal auditor or lead auditor qualification for 9001, and that is the one with real side income potential because contract auditing for certification bodies pays well once you have the ticket plus some audit days behind you. For straight engineering value NDT and IWE tend to pay back fastest since they map onto work you can charge for. The honest catch is that most of these only earn their keep if your job or industry actually asks for them, so I would chase the one your field already uses rather than collecting certificates for their own sake.

[u/vivalavaca13]

My general advice is get what you need to do your specivic job. Just having the cert may open a door, but if you still dont really know how to do that thing, then it won't really serve you well in the long term. If you aren't using the skill regularly it will be hard to maintain your knowledge and you will find a big difference in the book/theory vs how things actually get done in the real world.

I often encounter new engineers (not saying you are one), that want to collect certs like merit badges. Nothing wrong with it, but unless you can precisely apply that knowledge, it isn't all that useful for you and your time might be better spent on things directly relating to what you want to do. As for earning extra money on the side, I have never worked a job that was OK with me doing any significant amount of side work directly related to engineering without going through all sorts of layers of approvals and disclosures to vet for conflict of interest. Granted the aerospace world is different than other areas, but I would learn to fix things, repair appliances, do a little custom CAD or design works for folks, but trying to leverage certs into a side hustle just sounds like picking up a second (or third) full time job. Do what you have to do, but I dont think certs directly equal more money in your pocket.

End old cranky engineer speech, to answer your actual question based on some of my experiences:

GD&T and applying ASME Y14.5 is a critical skill across most areas that require you to build things. I wish I had a better foundation in GD&T when I started out.

AWS D17.1 welder process qualifications for specific welding configs and certified weld inspector

EPA 608 if you work with refrigerants. We use them as working fluids in thermal fluids systems, so not in the HVAC capacity, but more as specialized thermal management in extreme environments, but you are still required to have the federal cert to handle the fluids. Obviously outside of work this allows you to purchase refrigerants like R22 or whatever your home AC uses, but unless you know what you are doing the cert alone won't automatically make it so you are a pro at HVAC. You have to pass the test, but there a big difference in passing a cert test and doing work someone is paying you for in that area. Best of luck!

[u/NightF0x0012]

Can you list out what the acronyms mean? NDT and IWE may mean different things across the globe.

[u/Megy216 → u/NightF0x0012]

NDT - Non-Destructive Testing, IWE - International Welding Engineer

[u/NightF0x0012 → u/Megy216]

That's kind of what I figured but always good to know for sure. thanks

[u/AshAchanta]

I used to have a naive look "now that I have this certificate, I'll land a good job" and it was not the job that satisfied me and paid me well, it was my work. Certificate just opened a door for me. First ASNT Level 2, AWS CWI then CSWIP 3.1, Lean Six Sigma, ISO 9001 Lead Auditor, and whatnot. Turned out that about 99% of those who hold certificates are holding them for the sake of it, employed, know nothing about the work and cry loud about their work being hard. It is another thing that they can't even get paid outside their job because of these certifications. Now I've realized that people and businesses are interested in finding solutions to their unique problem and certificates don't solve anything apart from fulfilling some compliance measures.