Career Advice - Piping Materials Engineer 1

[boy_wonderr]

Hi,

I am currently a Facilities Project Engineer for a natural gas operator and have the opportunity join an industrial gas company as Piping Materials Engineer. I like my current role but mainly considering the job because I want to get into cryogenics. My background is in Mechanical Engineering and I have an interest in materials engineering. I want to learn all there is to learn about piping classes, fittings type, insulation, coatings, etc.

1) With a specialized role like this would it be hard to transition back to a project engineering role in the new company? I do have my PE and PMP

2) What's the usual progression for this role?

3) What's the prospect as Materials Engineer in today's IT and software dominating age?

Thanks in advance

 

[Snickster]

So you have a Mechanical Engineer BSME degree?

I don't see how becomming very knowlegeable in piping materials will give you that much special expertise in engineering. Now if you graduated with a materials engineer degree with expertise in metalurgy that is different.

What you describe is just thorough knowledge of piping materials, classes, fittings type, insulation and coatings which is just really general knowledge that a typical process mechanical design engineer will come to know after a couple of years in the design business. I have 40 years of mechanical design engineer experience and what your describe is just basic knowlege for a design engineer that you pick up along the way. Of course it is an accomplishment to develop this understanding and the industrial company you refer to may need someone to be their expert on the subject matter, but I don't see how it is very transferable to other jobs, or provides special knowlege that will form a basis for advacement in a engineering career but to me would be more of a dead end. Nor do I see how this is related in anyway to cryogenics.

Also once you take this job I believe it will be hard to get back into the project engineering/project management side of engineering as it would be a big step-up back to where you now are.

If you are a very technical person then get into process mechanical design engineering and you will not only learn about piping materials but you will also learn how to design the process piping and equipment systems. If you are not very technical or don't want to go down that road, I would just stay in project engineering / project management and I believe eventually that experience will be transferable to much better project manangement position in the future with many various companies including design engineering companies.

 

[boy_wonderr]

So you have a Mechanical Engineer BSME degree?

I don't see how becomming very knowlegeable in piping materials will give you that much special expertise in engineering. Now if you graduated with a materials engineer degree with expertise in metalurgy that is different.

What you describe is just thorough knowledge of piping materials, classes, fittings type, insulation and coatings which is just really general knowledge that a typical mechanical process design engineer will come to know after a couple of years in the design business. I have 40 years a mechanical design engineer experience and what your describe is just basic knowlege for a design engineer that you pick up along the way. Of course it is an accomplishment to develop this understanding and the industrial company you refer to may need someone to be their expert on the subject matter, but I don't see how it is very transferable to other jobs, or provides special knowlege that will form a basis for advacement in a engineering career but to me would be more of a dead end. Nor do I see how this is related in anyway to cryogenics.

Also once you take this job I believe it will be hard to get back into the project engineering/project management side of engineering as it would be a big step-up back to where you now are.

If you are a very technical person then get into process mechanical design engineering and you will not only learn about piping materials but you will also learn how to design the process piping and equipment systems. If you are not very technical or don't want to go down that road, I would just stay in project engineering / project management and I believe eventually that experience will be transferable to much better project manangement position in the future with many various companies including design engineering companies.

It felt like taking the role would increase my overall engineering expertise by learning piping materials, since I lack that knowledge now. But I did get a sense that the knowledge gap would fill after a couple of months in this role, or even through another role like you said. I do want to stay technical as long as possible, my current role is a good balance between engineer and PM. I definitely enjoy project execution style of work and the variety of equipment/facilities I am exposed to. Looks like I'll have to either take the risk and take the role or be patient before an ideal lateral move arises.

 

[Snickster]

The industrial process design engineering companies I worked allowed all mechanical engineers to work in all aspects of engineering including piping materials, piping stress analysis, and equipment engineers which perform other calculation such as pump/heat exchanger/vessels, including writing all project piping and equipment specifications and construction specifications. I think this is common for most US design firms. My previous company did mostly oil and gas design projects and this is how it was. My company before that which I worked 22 years did design in oil and gas, refining and chemical plants and all design engineers did all aspects.

However my previous company was bought out by a Netherlands design engineer firm that does oil and gas design, mostly offshore platforms. They had seperate sections in the mechanical engineering department for piping/piping materials, another for equipment, and another for piping stress analysis. This can make things more efficient since people get real knowledgeable more about their specific areas. However it it pretty boring because you get a limited amount of experience in only one area. I don't think in this case you can move around very easily to other areas such as equipment or stress analysis if you are in the piping group, and it would be more difficult to get a job with another company considering your limited knowlege base and similar jobs available I believe.

That being said it would be a valid career as piping material engineer but I don't think you can transfer out of that very easy and that may be your job for a long time whether you like it or not, but there are companies that have piping/piping materials engineering groups that you may be able to transfer employers to in the future. I think a lot of the US large engineering firms may specialize their engineers in different areas.

 

[Snickster]

Also at the company I worked for 22 years we did hire a few gas pipeline operating engineers for positions as mechanical design enginneers in pipelines. They had expertise in aspects of operating, maintenance, specifications and codes and some calculations that our engineers did not have in house. They were able to make the transition to design with not too much difficulty. They were in their 40's or 50's and had accumulated alot of practical pipeline experience and they were technical enough to do the calculations required to do the detail design of the pipelines. However I don't know how common it is for someone to find a job in design after having all experience in field.

 

[MickMc]

In my experience in mostly Oil & Gas if you join as piping materials engineer that will be area you are working as piping has 3 general areas within disciple which are layout, stress and materials the latter 2 being considered the specialised within piping.

You will be responsible for generating and specifying the materials selected for piping classes and special items such as steam traps etc but also a main part will be requisitioning of said materials, technical bid evaluation and technical part of purchase orders and will be focal point of all technical matters with vendor and client.

It will somewhat limit your future roles if you wanted to go back to project engineering but it is a very important function within any project. I note what Snickster experience in different discipline activities but in Oil & Gas Industry you would not have this diverse roles as even within mechanical it is broke down to static, rotating and package engineering. The main disciplines within engineering in OIl & Gas and other related industries are Process, Piping, Mechanical, Electrical and Control& Instrumentation and all have subsets within. Note also that I am referring to so called downstream side excluding subsea and pipelines which are different skill set.

 

[LittleInch]

Maybe it's the terminology but for me a piping materials engineer is the specialist to go to to find out what materials are needed for a particular set of design conditions, be it cold hot or corrosive fluid.

They don't usually get involved in basic piping issues like you mention other than maybe coatings.

There will continue to be a need for piping engineers, materials engineers as the old boys give up and all the IT bots and girls still need to drive cars, buy apartments and live.

You don't say your age or years of experience but if you persist in a specialist role for more than say 3 or 4 years, it gets difficult to show the experience needed to do something different, especially project work unless you get a lucky break IME.

Everyone's different so if that's the field you want to get into then go for it. I never did so went down the technical route ending up as Engineering Manager/ SME.I love it but I need specialists to do the detail stuff. Your call.



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[davefitz]

This is a good time in our history to become a piping materials engineer , but to be effective and above average one would need to improve ones education in the material sciences, welding ,as well as codes and standards. The first step is to read as many recent technical papers in the area of piping and materials as you can get easy free access to , typically published at ASME conferences as well as international conferences. Espescially of import are those papers that are written by engineers of your company's competitors, and much of the most recent advances in material science is occurring in Asia. Latest advances are in HEA's, high entropy alloys, but for cryogenic projects mostly aluminum and certain grades of stainless steel seem to dominate. Welding practices are evolving as well, with computer controlled welding becoming more relevant.

One problem one may face in becoming educated in that field today is the interface between today's digital literature ( via internet but isolated by paywalls) and the past printed literature when the art of cryogenic engineering was developed - not all of that printed literature is scanned and made freely available to the average person, and technical libraries are archiving printed literature in unavailable warehouses and the tech libraries are now just empty halls with a few terminals . In the extreme case, we are just an extended power outage away from reverting to a 19th century techncial capability.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick