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Hi all!

My name is Ann and I just joined the forum, I’m also a new comer to process piping installation business. I’m still trying to understand it all and our little company (just me and my husband) is still navigating through all the different ways to approach the industry. It’s a tough economy! I was wondering – for those of you involved in the industry (especially veterans) business owner or not, what are some of services, tools, strategies, or latest resources you find helpful or profitable in doing your work or - business? Online or offline, I’m sure there is quite a lot in both right?!

Thanks and God bless!

[kkala]

Living in Greece, I can say about local situation, naturally influenced by international environment.
--Piping design is a prosperous task of high demand, so perspectives are better than chemical engineering. Nevertheless this is considered specialty of Mechanical Engineer rather than Chemical. One should be able to accomplish piping design up to isometrics and calculate pipe supports (e.g. piperacks). These should be elaborated from relevant PIDs and layouts, after inspection on site.
--The next step would be to install the piping yourself, giving a lump sum price for the task. Process and refinery piping seems to be undertaken by companies of proven experience, so you can first enter the field as a subcontractor to get familiarization. Commerce can bring high profits or losses, as you know, and competition gets harder during recession. One can specialize in piping testing (hydrostatic test, leakage test, welding radiographies and annealing), which contractors perform en mass in new Projects before commissioning. I do not know if they are prosperous, but they are in demand and (at least here) few contractors are familiar with all relevant standards.
--Natural gas pipelines with their metering / valve stations are also a task of interest for a designer or a contractor.
-- Of course it is necessary to size piping following Client's criteria, and estimate water hammer effects. These alone do not seem to be prosperous tasks here, but they may be a good endow to get a whole piping task including these. As a chemical engineer, I would try to be good at the advantageous topics, like two phase and condensate flow.
-- I cannot be specific due to distance. Before trying a strategy defining activities, I would try to guess the demand of these activities, that is whether these are widely used and how many engineers are dealing with them. Saturated or quite immature activities give little profit, if at all.
Wishes for a good encouraging start,