What is technical role a mechanical engineer can do in oil & gas 3

[engraptor]

All,

I am a mechanical engineer working for an oil & gas company as a project engineer doing maintenance & expansion projects.

I feel my role is mostly baby sitting other engineers at consulting companies called EPCs (engineering procurement construction) who also just oversee vendors/OEMs(original equipment manufacturer).

I want to do design as opposed to "project management" which is all there is oil and gas for mechanical engineers.

Can any of the seniors please guide me in a possible technical career path within oil and gas, preferably working on owner(not EPC) side.

 

[zdas04]

KernOily,
As always any generalization is wrong much of the time. Most of the engineers I work with at EPC contractors are above average intelligence for engineers in this industry, I just keep seeing bright guys dropped into projects that they are not qualified to do. The result is rarely good. One of my colleagues at a Major hired an EPC to evaluate a pipeline we had just purchased. He asked me to go to the results meeting. The guy presenting was a civil engineer who had never done any pipe flow work. He addressed the problem by writing a single step "pipeline model" in Excel. His test data matched field data in zero locations. Most were no where close. He presented that result, then went on to recommend system modifications based on his model. Smart guy. Without a clue. Incompetent result. (BTW I built a real pipeline model of the system the next day, it suggested that all of his system modifications were very bad ideas)

I worked on a project last year where the EPC engineers were all really smart plant guys working on a field project. After the first hour of the week long kick off meeting I was so flabbergasted by the total lack of field knowledge that I volunteered to do a series of 5 lunch and learn modules to try to at least dissuade the concept that every well will be average ±3% in fluids, flow rates, pressures, and temperatures from the design conditions. These were smart guys who simply did not have the necessary tools to comprehend that a reservoir is going to give you what it gives you and your control is extremely limited. At the end of the week the $7 Billion project had identified almost $5 billion that didn't need to be spent in the first 10 years and everyone was happy, but getting the plant guys to accept that a well is not a plant feed required a concentrated effort. That effort to get talented people to understand the environment they find themselves in almost never happens. So I see multi-billion dollar projects fall off the tracks time after time because those oh so subtle and elegant solutions are Reynolds Number limited or can't handle 12000 mg/L TDS (when the design number was 10,000 mg/L), or one well making 50 times the expected average while 20 other make half or less.

I see so many medium-sized projects that are designed by people without relevant experience and without supervision by someone with relevant experience. The result is incompetent. The people a just people and on average they are a touch brighter than the average engineer, but having a brilliant electrical engineer design a wellsite separator does not lead to a competent result (I caught that one before we stuck welder to steel).

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[zdas04]

KernOily,
Take a look at thread378-383150 and see what I mean. This guy comes across as a pretty darn competent Pressure Vessel engineer who joined an EPC and is now the piping guy. He is unlikely to get much support within his company, and if he doesn't get guidance here he's going to make it up as he goes along. The result the first few times off the blocks are unlikely to be excellent.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[zcfactor626]

Been a lurker on this forum, but this thread caught my attention as I experienced and witnessed similar job functions. I started out in consulting firm doing design and drafting for oil and gas projects before moving over to a major that did both in-house and contracted work.

When I first got hired on, the engineering structure was basically a facility engineer responsible for an area. The facility engineer would be responsible for everything in the area, such maintenance, regulatory compliance, emergencies, identifying any future work etc. In addition, the other duty was project engineering, management, and technical/field support.

Detailed design engineering was either done in-house or contracted out depending on the complexity of the scope of work

In house work was basically initiated by the facilities engineer by creating a design criteria document. This is where design parameters of the project specified and internal/external departments would give their input. Once all the design criteria was finished, it would be handed it off to the design department, where a pipe designer would be assigned. The designer does all the design work design document specifications create the drawing.

When projects were contracted, then the facilities engineer would be the owners engineer. Basically you would be baby sitting the contracted project engineer.

You're probably thinking, well you have an in-house design department... why is work still contracted? Workload, time and cost is the best answer. We had an in-house design department that had first rights (union agreement) to any project. If they couldn't meet proposed deadline, then the engineering design, drafting and management would be contracted out. Also in-house design was a time consuming and bureaucratic process. It took time to get all the input from relevant departments to create your design guidelines document. After you finally get the relevant information for the design parameters, you have to give it to the design department and wait for the design package. IMHO this was the biggest bottleneck in the project execution processes. I never understood why it would take forever to get a simple drawing out of the design department.

If the engineering plans aren't completed in the calender year, then there was a high risk of losing the funding for the following year. If that happens, then the project sits in limbo until it becomes a big emergency that can't wait. Then the facility engineer is forced to take care of it immediately by bypassing the bureaucratic in-house process and getting whatever fixed or doing something to delay the inevitable ASAP. In the mix between all that is scoping other work, 3rd party municipal or regulatory info requests, answering questions from the designer, doing process improvement items, review red-line drawings, field engineering support, endless meetings, and dealing with other emergencies ( 3rd party dig-ins, leaks etc). I could ramble on and on, but the point is that project engineering was not the primary role as there were a lot of other responsibilities to attend to with work scope, leaks and digs-ins being the top of my hit list. When things get too busy, items tend to fall through the cracks. This happened far too often and was always a discussion point for process improvement meetings and maintenance operation folks.

This work structure existed for the longest time. At some point in time, there was a company reorganization with the direction of better project execution and near zero contract work. In managements view to accomplish this task, they decided to split the role of the facility engineer. The facility engineer would just be in charge of emergency maintenance, scoping and identifying work in his/her assigned area. Therefore, the project execution role was given to a project engineer. I had enjoyed the project execution role more than the other roles of a facilities engineer, so I requested a transfer into this new department. The in-house design was unchanged, which was create the high level parameters and give it to the design department. However, the only difference was that I could take a more active role in the design process instead of being bombarded with other responsibilities.

For the other projects that still needed to be contracted out, I initially thought it was a complete waste time to be the owners engineer for a consultant/EPC. Most if not all the consultants used to work for my company and they had complete access to our company standards library. There was one company initiative that changed my thinking on this.

Awhile back, upper management wanted to create a whole new department for asset replacement projects. There was a deadline to replace X number of vintage components classified as high risk per year and they knew it could never be done purely in-house and on time, so they contracted out the work to an engineering consultant. The consultant literally had a blank check and no engineering/design oversight to run this department. When another reorganization came with new upper management, they took a hard look at this special department. The consultant was creating incredible results,but management felt we could do better if it was brought inhouse. Management didn't just want to bring the work in-house, but they also wanted to copy the exact processes/procedures that the consultant used. This is where the trouble began. Adapting new processes and procedures at a blink of eye into a big company that's been doing it another way for the longest time is asking for trouble.

The consultant had the project engineer do all the detailed design work on paper, and a drafter created the formal engineering drawing based on the sketch. Well as I wrote before, our in-house engineering and design department worked differently. In-house project engineers do design, but not in that kind of fine detail. Upper management wanted us to copy exactly what the consultant did, so we had to adapt to being a design engineer and drafter, which had good/bad results. The bad was that I got pulled into this department mainly because I had previous design and drafting experience. Therefore my primary role was to review the design packages before it was handed to the design department. It nice to do drafting for a change; however many of the in-house project engineers, who had just been managing the engineering for the longest time could not do detailed design. The ones that adapted quickly were previously employed at a consultant or had worked in our design department before moving on. Another bad thing was that the project engineer was doing detailed design, which is a union shop responsibility. Therefore, there were a few designers that thought their job was being taken away and and this lead to a few union grievances.

Engineering drawing standard was another issue as the consultant had created drawings using their own proprietary standard. We reached an agreement to use the exact drawing template which caused heated arguments with the design and project engineering department. One argument that I recall and agreed with was that the contractors drawings were essentially telling the crews how to install pipe, instead of just showing the final product or intent. Therefore, you could say it's a hybrid design/assembly/instruction manual drawing. They were essentially trying to cram every detail and assembly process into a single drawing that lead to a convoluted product and messy redline from the field.

In the end, this only lasted for 2-1/2 years before management abandoned trying to convert the engineering and design department to function exactly like the contractor had done. I think that was mostly because management discovered that our in-house cost was far too high compared to the historical averages. Therefore, we looked for ways to adapt certain aspects and not a complete conversion of the contractors process. The point here is that you may feel that you have to baby sit the contractor, but there is a reason that you have to.

I was fortunate the major that I joined did in-house work, or I would have been bored just like the OP is experiencing. Also I consider myself lucky that I did design and drafting before switching jobs. I've met engineers hired straight out of college, who are routinely thrown into the project engineering role without relevant experience. Without the experience, you are essentially managing the technical side of engineering, but not understanding if the in-house designer or contracted engineer did the design correctly or makes sense.

 

[ARenko]

Why not an R&D position at one of the major service companies (Weatherford, Halliburton, Schulmberger, etc...)? Plenty of design work there.

 

[TheTick]

If you want to design, go to where design is happening. Don't waste your time with companies that use engineers as clerks.

You will need to drill down. The best design opportunities are at smaller companies, further down from the top tier.

Consider also design opportunities in other fields. It may be easier to take a route to O&G design via design in some other field.

 

[rotw]

I dont see how companies can become competent without investing in people. I simply do not understand how these companies could combine having competent people and a high employee turnover ratio, both at the same time.

It takes ages to build a specialist in a certain field / product / component. It takes personal and life time sacrifice (moral and financial) for people to acquire knowledge and become a problem solver in Oil & Gas industry.

With knowledge comes salary, respect, consideration and reputation; consideration also encourages toward seeking excellence and spreading this excellence around in company. This virtous cycle is nowadays broken. And since nature does not like vacuum, respect is replaced with envy and jaleousy, merit is replaced with unfairness. One can go on and on.

Worse is the following; If you follow the golden rule "first do not harm"...well these crooks have broken this rule because not only they do not improve the background of people but can even become harmful to competent people. I do not advocate to sit back or lay down and let the company develop you, you are in charge of your personal development - but till a certain point your life depends from the quality of your work environment and your peers- sorry.

People from management down to lower layers, unfortunately often layers with technical background, are treating people like an adjustment variable in their "engineering progress curve" whereby in this three words sequence, they are blind to understand the implication of the first as long as the progress curve is sharp enough. By playing with workforce adjustment and reduction like simply pushing on a joystick they claim proudly how they set the benchmark in engineering execution.

I dont know about all EPCs companies, but to me an "incompetent EPC" is definitely something that practically exists and (will) continue to do business.

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".

 

[rotw]

First sentence should read:

I dont see how EPC companies can become competent without investing in people.

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".