Demise of Engineering Design 1

[4Pipes]

Much has been said about outsourcing of design effort to both on shore and off-shore. While the money men are not totally innocent, they are only getting more than their fair shair of influence by default.
The 2 real reasons for the slide in engineering are
a) Engineers allowing technical illerates into positions of power.
b) The lack of any REAL checking by inspectors from both public and private organisations.

Managers and insurers / inspectors want only 2 things -
a) to see signatures saying the calculations / systems have been checked by another sucker.
b) to avoid getting involved in any detail whatsover - which would mean not having somebody to blame. (I am not talking of every detail but enough detail to convince themselves beyond doubt that everything else is correct).

Managers might be able to claim ignorance - not a difficult excercise in some cases. Insurance inspectors have a lot to answer for. They are paid large amounts of money to know, to check and to take responsibility. If inspectors did their jobs, managers would not be able outsource work to the next town let alone the next continent.

 

[JoeTank]

Perhaps you could expand upon your assertion about inspectors being "responsible." Responsible for what... responsible for their own actions?, responsible for the action of others?... just what do you mean here?

Steve Braune
Tank Industry Consultants

http://www.tankindustry.com

 

[4Pipes]

Inspectors are paid to independently check. The problem is what. In my 30 years experience of petrochemn and nuclear, many inspectors tend to concentrate on some some aspects at the total exclusion of others. I've worked on several jobs including nuclear where the inspectors spent all their time on logging radiographs. Other aspects including lack of adherence to weld procedures, non-spec base material and other "more-complicated" issues were agressively ignored.

In reply, inpectors of anything should be responsible for
a) The big picture if that is what they are paid for.
b) To clearly list all areas excluded from the inspection and what the exclusions mean to the interpretation of the results.

For example, if design approval resulting from inspection of calculations is based only on the presence of check signatures, then this should be clearly stated.

Lloyds were fined over $1m a few years ago for inadequate inspection of structure which collapsed killing 7. The welds might have been perfect but the fundamental "design" was very obviously flawed. Unfortunately, few seemed to have learned from this example.

 

[QCE]

Since most QC inspectors are poorly paid and not respected, no wonder most technical people don't want to do them.

 

[JoeTank]

4Pipes,

I think I met some of those inspectors! My previous post was too brief in that I was thinking of third-party inspectors that dealt with NDE issues during fabrication and construction. You seem to have responded in the tone that inspectors be responsible for design issues also. I'm not familiar with those types of inspectors.

You indentify and interesting point... the scope of inspection. I have seen a number of projects wherein the owner limited the inspection scope, such that the whole process of inspection became useless. During construction of a large potable water storage tank a NACE certificated coatings inspector was retained to conduct a weekly inspection during the progress of the work. Anyone familiar with coatings inspection will tell you that is a waste of money; however, the owner's budget was limited and perhaps the owner did not have an appreciation of the importance and value of the inspection process. After much counseling with the owner, he was unrepentent. Weekly inspections were authorized.

Upon arrival at site it was clear that the tank was not ready for coatings application in that many construction related issues still needed to be addressed. The most obvious problem was that the welds were not cleaned and ground. This issue was identified, but not resolved (between the owner and tank erection contractor) and the painting process began. Several weekly one-day visits were performed.

A year later the warranty inspection was performed on the coatings and massive coatings failures were noted. But, the coatings in areas that were inspected by the inspector did not fail. Predictably, the owner turned to the inspector and asked... "What happened? I paid you to be here so this did not occur!".

This is an all-to-often instance where the inspector gets the blame, but does not deserve it. This happens far too often to construction inspectors that are performing their job, but limited by outside influeneces beyond their control.

Steve Braune
Tank Industry Consultants

http://www.tankindustry.com

 

[JoeTank]

$Pipes,

In my previous post I stated...
"Anyone familiar with coatings inspection will tell you that is a waste of money; however, the owner's budget was limited and perhaps the owner did not have an appreciation of the importance and value of the inspection process."

What I meant to say...
"Anyone familiar with coatings inspection will tell you that is a waste of money TO NOT OBSERVE THE WORK ON A RESIDENT BASIS; however, the owner's budget was limited and perhaps the owner did not have an appreciation of the importance and value of the inspection process."

I certainly did not mean to imply that coatings inspection was a waste of money. Coatings observations should be conducted on a full time basis.


Steve Braune
Tank Industry Consultants

http://www.tankindustry.com