I grew up in machine shops, did sea time on submarines, and worked for years as a designer. I've been lucky enough to have worked with/under some excellent mentoring engineers when I was younger.
Here lately I'm thinking that I would be better off both in my bank account and personal satisfaction by starting my own process skid shop.
When I was a designer, my company was cool enough to include me in almost all steps in the project.
I got to make sales calls, write a quote, build a drawing set, do code calcs, purchase parts, supervise assembly, QA, double check PLC from the sub, and deliver/install.
It was a great experience and they encouraged me to work outside my job title.
The entire time I kept thinking to myself that I could do this on my own. The profit margins were insane (even with repeat customers contacting us to offer projects) and I'm positive I can beat out other shops in price and delivery time.
I pulled nuke welder quals back in my submarine days and am not too worried if I could do it again. I'm not a PE, but I'm finishing up my nuke engineering tech degree soon. That one can only get me a PE in one state (NJ?) I believe. I know there are times I would need a PE to sign off on my work, which isn't too terribly hard considering the documentation and spec package shows all the calcs and code references anyway.
So,
Do any of you have experience in this?
How does the market respond to guys/shops like me?
Have you worked with one man shops before?
Here lately I'm thinking that I would be better off both in my bank account and personal satisfaction by starting my own process skid shop.
When I was a designer, my company was cool enough to include me in almost all steps in the project.
I got to make sales calls, write a quote, build a drawing set, do code calcs, purchase parts, supervise assembly, QA, double check PLC from the sub, and deliver/install.
It was a great experience and they encouraged me to work outside my job title.
The entire time I kept thinking to myself that I could do this on my own. The profit margins were insane (even with repeat customers contacting us to offer projects) and I'm positive I can beat out other shops in price and delivery time.
I pulled nuke welder quals back in my submarine days and am not too worried if I could do it again. I'm not a PE, but I'm finishing up my nuke engineering tech degree soon. That one can only get me a PE in one state (NJ?) I believe. I know there are times I would need a PE to sign off on my work, which isn't too terribly hard considering the documentation and spec package shows all the calcs and code references anyway.
So,
Do any of you have experience in this?
How does the market respond to guys/shops like me?
Have you worked with one man shops before?
