Superpiper,

I think your concerns are quite common among people in similar situations to yourself. I have worked for company's that have 'low cost execution centres' and my understanding is that the quality of work returned has generally been poor. But like you say the cost of rework needs to be assessed against the front to back costs associated with a project fully executed in Europe.

Something I think one or two people are missing here is that the 'low cost centres' are used because that's exactly what they are - low cost. Why do they think that external organisation's are needed to check/verify their work? As long as they stay low cost and the quality is such that once rectified it stays overall cheaper they will continue to get work.

Perhaps people working and living local to low cost centres should take in to consideration (with respect to the money we're paid), how much the cost of living is in the UK. I bet they'd fall off their chairs to know the average house price...it's all relative.

I've only been directly involved in pipe stress for the last 4 years or so. For the most part I work alongside qualified/Chartered Engineers who have provided me with a good base to work from. I haven't been on this forum for a while now as I was finding it quite tedious trawling through posts which to be quite honest, were very worrying. I often wondered if people asking how to stress a 2" 50 Deg F line had seen a critical line list, General Engineering document or even attempted the tutorials in Caesar II.

I appreciate everyone has to start somewhere, we've all been there. But as a minimum they need to have the right level of qualifications and an understanding of how the code interacts with the software. Sorry to bang on a bit this is an issue that a lot of people find very frustrating.