Electrical Designer

If you tore open the walls of your home or office, you’d find a labyrinth of wires that looks like a network of rivers and roadways. At first glance, it’s a chaotic jumble of cable. Just like the nation’s highways and byways, however, a closer look reveals an organized and orderly system of electrical channels and conduits.

If you’re an Electrical Designer, you’re the mastermind behind that system. Like an Electrical Engineer — but without an engineering license — Electrical Designers design the electrical systems that deliver power to residential and commercial buildings.

To do that, Electrical Designers use computer-aided design, or CAD, software to prepare wiring diagrams for Electricians and installers, who use their layouts like blueprints to accurately insert wires and other electrical components into the “guts” of a new or existing structure, where they act like the building’s central nervous system.

Because electricity can be extremely dangerous — and also expensive — the reason you do what you do is to power buildings as safely and efficiently as possible. In addition to their layout, therefore, you also specify electrical systems’ size, materials, components and load calculations, all of which must meet building code requirements.

To do your job — which might encompass electrical systems for lighting, security, cable, telephone and sound — you’ll work closely with licensed Electrical Engineers. While they’re in charge of design principle and theory, however, you’re in charge of design application and execution. In other words: They think; you do. In the end, though, you’re both modern-day Thomas Edisons, lighting up people’s lives — literally.