elec power plant component mfr's are going kaput- lost expertise + knowledge 11

[davefitz]

I've been following the precipitous decline of the US and EU mfr's of electric power plant components, such as GE/Alstom/CE, BW, FW, Siemens. The loss of expertise and knowledge is astounding, and I assume that any future large central station power plants will have their components designed and fabricated in India and China. This observation is for both nuclear and fossil plants.

The trend implies a default committment has been made toward renewable technologies, and funding for research into these older technologies will also devolve in US and the EU, involving a change in university curriculum ( adios thermodynamics) . It implies that the remaining US and EU central stations will eventually rely on overseas technical support for repairing equipment and aftermarket demands,and those plants will learn to play the role that the steam locomotive played after the diesel-electric locomotive was introduced.

The funding for the technical support systems ( ASME) will also dry up, and the related industry conferences have already seen a gradual shrinking toward irrelevance.

One way to prevent complete loss of technical knowledge may be to have google archive the technical standards, research reports, and failure analyses of these mfrs and store them in some sort of library that is only searchable in some qualified manner ( TBD).

I have also noticed a growing form of "cultural amnesia" regarding the traumatic events of the 1940s-1964, where the newer generation of people are unfamiliar with , and actually deny the existence of, nuclear warheads, fallout, and related radiactive issues. Considering that it will take at least another 120 yrs to decommission the waste stockpiles and used fuel, this amnesia does not bode well.

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

 

[MJCronin]

Superb post davefitz ! ..... This message summarizes many of the topics that bother me deeply, and you have stated things very well.

I believe that we, as a nation, should have a discussion about the "layers of loss" here that you seem to begin to address. .... and I am talking about the lack of people with technical skills in performing machine design, power engineering loss, studies to power plant operators, etc. etc..... and all the way down to reading blueprints, specifications and fundamental concepts!

Yes, I am well aware that I am a geezer and that "things were always better long ago" from a geezer vantage... but this is more serious..

AS A NATION, WE ARE GOING DOWN THE WRONG PATH !!!

But, there is now an empty socket in most organizations where there are no people with skills (or even to hire !) in the 30 to 45 year old age group !!!!

This group was all the people who went to become website designers, internet game developers, film directors and phone app designers etc.. etc.. etc........ Their skill are now lost

Unfortunately, there are also currently many evil people (MBAs) who feel that our nation can magically develop a complete "STEM" educational program, play with LEGOS for a few years and the system will excrete out all of the trained engineers, designers, machinists and electricians that you could ever want! ...... Do not bother that pretty head of yours learning Partial Differential Equations..... nobody need to do that anymore !!

Then magically, these people will be led by young professional women (members of Congress)to a mountain where there will be much chanting and prayer. The Confused Masses will be told to develop the "New Green Economy".... and do it right away !!!!

Climate change is coming, so we need a "Manhattan Project" effort !!!!

Then the fun will begin .....

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[waross]

Then magically, these people will be led by young professional women (members of Congress)to a mountain where there will be much chanting and prayer. The Confused Masses will be told to develop the "New Green Economy".... and do it right away !!!!

Do you have Canadian roots?

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[Sparweb]

Dave,
Your question resonates.

One way to prevent complete loss of technical knowledge may be to have google archive the technical standards, research reports, and failure analyses of these mfrs and store them in some sort of library that is only searchable in some qualified manner ( TBD).

Puzzled by this statement. In aerospace, what you ask for exists already, existed before the internet, and when the web came along, easily moved over there. I was taught my discipline from that body of knowledge. My textbooks referenced it all along. When I interact with other aerospace members of Eng-Tips, they all refer to the same stuff. Even when they can't name the origin, I recognize the jargon. One weak point is that today you can access the majority of it from a handful of agencies, and in the "winner takes all" internet we have today, what you can find elsewhere is negligible in comparison. If any one of those agencies decided to stop sharing their legacy information it would cause severe inconvenience, but not a loss of the information. There are many dedicated folks that keep a "backup" and some even share it on the net despite being redundant. I have my own little stash, in fact.

Does that not exist for power engineering? I have a copy of Marks Handbook, Perry's Handbook, the CRC Handbook, and a stack of other thermodynamic textbooks and stuff. Is there no link between that paper/text knowledge and the internet?

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[davefitz]

Sparweb,

The US power industry is entirely made up of private companies, who protect their technical expertise with a combination of patents and confidential design standards. This protection both improves their competition in the market place as well as protects them from lawsuits. If they layoff all persons with more than 5 yrs experience, then one possible way to avoid complete loss of "corporate memory" is a combination of AI / expert systems plus digitizing all their internal reports and using persons familiar with library searches . The problem with this approach is that , lacking persons with personal technical knowlege, there is zero potential for creative solutions to new problems. It also begins the proces of "corporate amnesia" . One problem with amnesia is that you don't learn from past errors. On the other hand , amnesia also prevents inhibitions.

I think part of ther reason for protecting corporate technical expertise stems from a 1967 US supreme court ruling ( related to IBM/ Intel executives) that ruled that an engineer's technical knowlege in a particular focused area is not his personal possession, but is owned by the company he had worked for.

The information in Mark's and other handbooks, and college texts, is that these sources only provide fundamental information, and do not provide detailed guidelines and design procedures needed to confidently build large complex machinery, where the failure of one small part would compromise the operation of a $2 billion USD investment, and open the mfr up to a huge liability.

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

 

[crshears]

Sparweb wrote:

In aerospace, what you ask for exists already, existed before the internet, and when the web came along, easily moved over there.

Does that mean the drawings, plans and specifications for the Avro Arrow do in fact still exist somewhere? [tee hee]

CR

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]

 

[EdStainless]

As most companies have done a very poor job of capturing knowledge this will keep happening in field after field.
A lot of work work has been done to capture information, but not knowledge.
In some fields (like mine, metallurgy) original references are simply not available unless you happen to own the old books.
I reviewed a paper recently and ripped the guy. He used a fairly std old diagram, but just referenced the last place that he saw it, and with none of the original source or backup information.
In many fields the young players will know what decisions were made, but not how or why.
Which poses serious risks for making the next set of decisions.
We can't farm this out, because the practicing engineers overseas where (for example) power plants are still being built is simply based on our experience. They don't know how to build a new unique plant from scratch, because they don't know the background either.
This haunts me at work.


= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[GregLocock]

I noticed this effect in my own industry, automotive. Due to the cyclical nature of the industry, 50-65 year old experts in their fields are retrenched, never to be replaced. So I started an internal project for my group, to build a wiki, where we could document programs, and all the techniques and workarounds. The first part fell foul of our document retention schedules, which severely limits how long you can keep working documents (rather than final reports). The second, and perhaps more useful, part lives on as an ever growing accumulation of wisdom and experience. But, we are one IT upgrade away from losing it all, and of course it is invisible to most people inside the company, and everyone outside.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[MJCronin]

Fellow Retired Geezers,

Just make the damn Transition to the "Green New Deal" .... !!!! Our Lords and Masters want it DONE !!! ...... SOON !!!

Just do it ..... no backtalk ..... PUT DOWN YOUR DAMN 3:00PM APPLESAUCE !!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-deal-questions-answers.html

You competent people got ten years.... make it happen !!!! ...... WE KNOW WHERE YOUR SS CHECKS ARE DEPOSITED !!!

We need you to come out of retirement and lead a brand new unskilled group in rebuilding the electrical generation and distribution systems of America .... In order to move things along and conform with the latest management philosophy, there will be one project manager, one PMP or MBA, one project scheduler, and one Project Historian per working engineer.

We don't want to hear any lame excuses like "no one makes that equipment anymore !!" or "None of these people can read any engineering drawings

Hurry, time is short !!!

Oh, and here are six busloads of help from the inner cities .... You may have to do quite a bit of training

No, they cannot weld, they have zero construction experience .... but, they have all completed their STEM LEGO assignments.

Ohhhhh .... Existing Power Plant records and drawings ? .... You Wrinklebutts want to review the existing plant records ???.... Too Late .....!!!All Plant Records have been discarded and are being burned as we speak ...

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/f...kforce--Changing Needs, New Opportunities.pdf

Tell me I am Wrong ....

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[Sparweb]

@Davefitz,
The aerospace industry (in the West) employs a lot of research funded by both industry and government (via universities and agencies like the FAA and NASA). I think I take it for granted that there is a supply of current relevant information in my industry that I can use. Just this morning, for example, I reviewed a new memorandum from EASA (Euro Aviation Safety Agency) about validation of finite-element models that has some (surprisingly) pragmatic guidance to avoid the GIGO pitfalls that often happen in these sorts of models.

I try to imagine how I would work if I were denied access to that supply of information. It's hard to do. These days, a lot of people mourn the breakup of Bombardier and worry about the possible collapse of Boeing. There is not, associated with this, much concern about the loss of "tribal knowledge". While there will certainly be some of this, the state of the art is rather well established within every company by both regulators, academic sources, and "what works" knowledge.

Could it be possible that a similar sort of initiative would help to preserve the knowledge you believe will vanish from the energy industry as you know it?

Back to your own points, still with an aero twist. I have witnessed the East/West knowledge gap personally during a 3-week tour of a Chinese aircraft manufacturing company. I was brought there to participate in a knowledge exchange as they try to bring a new aircraft to market. What I saw was both inspiring and tragic. The energy and industriousness is every engineer's dream. Imagine a shop full of people eager to build anything you design! But... Deprived of any real personal knowledge of what a "western" aircraft actually looks like, these chinese workers came up with a horrifying machine. In every detail.

I have recently been training and mentoring new recruits to my company. Some are temporary interns, some are permanent. In most, there's an experience gap in terms of knowing anything practical about anything mechanical - a frustrating prospect for a novice engineer. I am learning to work around it, and to some I have provided opportunities to get hands-on with assembly, riveting, and one even got to try welding. If we want to promote the skills of the next generation, we have to be involved ourselves. I don't know how I can influence the broader disdain for mechanical work, the reluctance to touch machinery that seems prevalent in young people around me. They say they want to get practical experience but they don't own a wrench set and whine about paying a shop to change the battery in their car. There's only so much I can do to influence this - it's more of a motivation gap.

@Crshears,
Surprise surprise, look what turned up in Saskatchewan:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saved-avro-arrow-blueprints-ordered-destroyed-1.5416554

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[davefitz]

Sparweb,

Aeropsace is strongly related to national security, much of its research is gov't funded, and it has a guaranteed customer . Many of the reports are publicly available to all, inlcuding to foreign governments. I recall that after the challenger accident ,there was a call to go back to using large single launch vehicles, such as the saturn 5, but the manufacturers say they lost the plans and would have to re-design it from scratch for the cost of an additional $2 billion USD. The russian embassy replied " no problem, we can send you a copy of the plans for $200 USD, since we copied them the day after they were released to the public in the 1960's." What we did instead is subcontracted a lot of launches to russia, since the EU's rockets were not , shall we say, successful.

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

 

[waross]

Helanna Gessner, interim curatorial, exhibits and collections manager at the Diefenbaker Canada Centre, with Gord Barnes, posing with the original Avro Arrow blueprints. (Submitted by Diefenbaker Canada Centre)

What irony.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[DAVIDSTECKER]

A few years ago we have a young Mechanical Engineer that had to Google "Saw Horse" to find out what the boss asked him to go get.

 

[LionelHutz]

Bless all the employees who knew better than to stupidly destroy every bit of the Arrow. It left a bunch of interesting historic bits that still exist.

 

[MJCronin]

Anybody else ??...

I believe that this is an important thread and that there are many out there who have strong feelings about this


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MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[davefitz]

MJC,

maybe so, but it is also possible that what we are seeing is the natural way that an outdated industry bites the dust. Its like the saying " old soldiers don't die, they just fade away". We saw the same behavior with the space launch industry, where the US depended on russia for 10+ yrs for launches, then SpaceX came along to replace the old way of getting off the planet.

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

 

[EdStainless]

With Saturn 5 remember that each engine had to be hand built, hand tuned, tested and re-built. They were not 'manufactured' as such.
In many cases 'lossing' old knowhow isn't such a big deal, people know the theory and then they develop solutions using new technology. The real disasters arise when they simply try to modify older technology without knowing and understanding why it was made the way it was.


= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[Sparweb]

These comparisons don't have to be hi-tech.
Another analogy can be made with the detrimental effect the automobile industry had on the business of wheelwrights, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths at the time in the early 20th-century. There is very little of that craft left in North America, though it's not gone. On the other hand, the quality of life led by the horses may have improved dramatically with the invention of the automobile.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[davefitz]

I think that most of the horses that become "redundant" by the car became dog food and glue. Many of the fields that were used to produce hay are still lying fallow.They did not remove the special tax deduction for horses until the tax act of 1986 ( sponsored by Sen Al Gore), which also put an end to the gentleman's ranches that raised thoroughbred horses only for their tax deduction.

Before the advent of the diesel electric locomotive ( plus new sources of oil) something like 20% of the US employment was somehow associated with the railroad, as the labor needed to keep the coal fired steam locomotives was phenomenal.The diesel electric freed up a lot of "redundant" workers. Most trains needed to stop every 60-100 miles to refill the water tanks but a diesel could go 1000 miles nonstop.The railroads eventually passed the baton to the tractor trailers, following the implementation of Ike's Interstate highway system, designed to allow movement of trailer launched missiles and emergency landings of jets.The only remnant of the old steam locomotive railroads is their template for corporate structures and business suits.

I am sure similar strange relationships will be found related to hi-tech's intrusion into most citizen's personal spaces.

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

 

[TBP]

Just a few months ago, when walking past our two most recent co-op students (3rd and 4th yr mechanical engineering students from a large, well-known Canadian university) who asked what I had in my hand as I stopped to chat. When I replied "It's a tachometer.", they asked in unison "What's a tachometer?" The 4th year chemical engineering student we had a couple of years ago, asked me at one point "What's a caulking gun?".

All three are nice, intelligent, polite young men - who haven't got one single clue about anything real.

I'm trying to imagine them being able to change a tire. And I can't...