Garret Laugenour, 36
Senior Control Engineer
APCO Inc.
North Salt Lake City, UT, United States
What Makes Garret an Engineering Leader
Garret is a senior control engineer and project group lead at APCO, working across a wide range of clients and project types. What distinguishes him is his commitment to lasting solutions rather than temporary fixes.
When a client struggled with its SCADA HMI, Garret addressed the root cause and the need for sound architecture rather than simply patching symptoms. Beyond his technical work, he is committed to developing people. Garret has helped drive APCO’s internal engineering training program through multiple iterations, investing in the next generation of engineers.
Leadership & Industry Contributions
One of Garret’s greatest strengths is the way he invests in others. Over the years, he has mentored interns and early-career engineers as they begin their careers. Whether helping them work through technical challenges, sharing lessons from his own experience or making himself available for questions, Garret is consistently willing to help.
He cares about the growth and success of those around him and has helped newer engineers build confidence and develop their skills. His willingness to support and encourage others makes him a natural leader.
Garret has also made significant contributions to the industry through his involvement in the development of Simtune and his dedication to advancing the skills of others. He has played an instrumental role in training controls engineers and helping develop a structured training program for engineers entering the field.
In addition, Garret has designed and implemented control solutions for customers in the water, agriculture and manufacturing industries, helping improve efficiency, reliability and overall system performance. His technical expertise and commitment to developing future engineering talent have made a lasting impact on APCO and the industries it serves.
Why Garret Chose This Career
Automation is Garret’s favorite aspect of engineering. He finds immense satisfaction in working with customers to understand their engineering objectives, constraints, priorities and principles, then developing the PLC programming and graphical interfaces that bring those needs together.
For Garret, much of that satisfaction comes from providing tools and insights that allow end users to better understand and engage with their engineering systems. Like a good puzzle, the reward also comes from overcoming challenges and obstacles to complete the task. When a system works as intended, he finds the result exhilarating.
