I wanted to add to this in case any more new piping designers are looking here:
In addition to what JOP posted.
Read/Contact the manufacturers. The egineers will provide you with a cut sheet or vendor doc or whatever term that company uses. That’s nice but you want to find the I&O (Installation/Owner’s)Manual. For most items they are available on line, if not contact the manufacturer, they are usually happy to send you one.
Ask questions, it’s much better to go to a more experienced piping designer, swallow your pride and say you don’t understand something vs sitting in a model review and have a client tear apart your model because it cannot be done that way.
Keep in mind it’s the engineer’s job to come up with the concept (what size pump is needed, pipe size, etc), it’s the piping designers job to 1st make sure what the engineer suggests makes sense and then to make sure that concept can work in the real world. Meaning we have to look at fabrication, installation, construction, maintainability of the systems. Not just put together a pretty 3D model.
Know things are going to change and usually at the worse possible time. Develop and effective change management system so you can handle those changes smoothly without sending the whole project into a tailspin.
Go on site visits whenever you can. It’s one thing to model a 42″ compact expanding gate valve with a stem 12′ tall and a 2′ tall actuator on top, it is something else to see it. And something else entirely to watch them install one. One week on site is worth more than all the book reading that can be done.
Work closely with the other discipline engineers. Piping designers don’t just worry about piping, we have to worry about and understand supports and stress and electrical and instrumentation and weather in the area and geotech reports and frostlines and….
