garzablaThere are many valid points here and as in all forums a lot of off tangent waffle. But we are missing the point. JOP has a blog on this site which stated that people outside of this business are clueless when you inform them that your profession is Piping Designer. I would submit that this ignorance of the importance what we do also applies to our Clients, CEO’s, Project Managers, Project Engineers and HR recruiters within our own industry.
It was our Clients that drove the transition to CAD, they did it in the misguided belief that it would significantly lower their costs and increase efficiency, they were convinced in this view by major EPC companies who were in turn convinced by the CAD Software companies. Now I am not anti CAD I am 40 years experienced, grey haired and PDS & AutoPlant proficient and while I believe the use of CAD has brought many benefits in efficiency and accuracy I do not believe it has lowered the costs to our Clients by much or at least as much they would like. Case in point I have just been laid off because I did not fit our Client imposed “Blended Rate” policy (Don’t give us good, we want cheap)
So we enter the era of Outsourcing, again a practice introduced by major EPC companies to satisfy an ever growing demand by our Clients to cut costs. Whether or not you agree with this practice is irrelevant, if the Client believes what the EPC has told him about the hundreds of Piping Designers in Somalia who can be paid 2 sacks of grain per hour that is where the work will go. Despite all the lip service paid to “Quality First” it is the bottom line that matters and what exactly is a “piper” anyway.
Sure they will screw up the first few jobs but do you really believe that the CEO of the EPC is going to admit that he made a mistake, no they’ll just move the work to some other third world country, software will improve and the remaining lack of quality will be justified by the perceived money saved
Now the Third Worlders are doing a better job the next stage is to abandon North America and Europe as a source of Plant Design expertise and move the whole operation to Asia or wherever the price is right. The major EPC’s will still retain their HO’s in North America but they will be just be a fat cat profit center.
It has happened in many other industries why should it not happen to ours?. We have been in transition for the last 20 years we are now witnessing the death of our profession in the Northern hemisphere.
Arguments about Piping Experience vs 3D Cad abilities are irrelevant if there’s no work and no industry to work in.