I am trying to get into being a pipe designer but am struggling to find any relevent courses to study here in the UK.

My working history is in petrochem and process industries where I served my time as a mechanical fitter and was responsible for all piping installation and mechanical maintenance. After finishing my apprenticeship I continued in the same line of work (contracting for 10 years on various sites owned by Shell, BP, ICI etc) until I took a year out to do a CAD qualification. I am familiar with producing mechanical layouts in 2D and 3D but have not produced any piping drawings on CAD even though I am familiar with all aspects of piping such as valves, flanges, fittings etc and also process flow diagrams and P&ID’s. I have bought various books such as ‘Pipe draughting and design’ by Parisher and Rhea and understand most of their contents.

My question is this….would people on here consider me to have enough experience to apply for any piping designer vacancies. I feel that if I were given an opportunity to train in this environment that I would be able to learn the job but I am weary of applying for something whereby on the first day I would feel ‘out of my depth’.

As far as I see it it’s a catch 22 position in that there are no training courses to get me to the desired level I need to be at to apply for the job yet I can’t get the job I want because I don’t feel confident enough to apply.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance.