| Offshoring
Cuts Both Ways
It
behooves all international design firms to participate in
global sourcing, for logical reasons. But firms that derive
most revenue from domestic work should maintain domestic resources
(ENR 8/2 p. 20).
Since the advent of competitive
bidding (the bane of good design work), and clients’
insatiable desire for speed, the quality and accuracy of project
design has suffered. Offshoring design work will only compound
this. It is sometimes impossible to coordinate design performed
at the same domestic address, let alone work performed in
a distant land.
If the U.S. wishes to maintain
a top position in knowledge-based design professions and education,
we must help to feed them. Qualified or not, design resources
across the pond will not help the end product or our economy.
Low cost alone will not enhance design firm profits, client
savings, design quality or national security.
.
There
are many fallacies in the argument in your cover story, "Offshoring–Is
it Good Business?" It says the current trend to offshore
engineering is good for the American engineer, American engineering
companies and the profession. In the long run, this practice
will lead to the demise of U.S. firms, universities and the
already dwindling pool of trained and experienced engineers.
I would like to have seen comments from people doing the work
in the trenches. Their view is far different. Unfortunately,
the profession has extremely weak professional organizations
funded by too many factions.
Engineering is supposed to be a
profession, but offshoring practices have reduced it to another
commodity. Those who believe that having "detail"
engineering and other tasks done in foreign countries is good
in the long term are only looking to line their pockets now.
Firms that use these practices simply have final design drawings
and contract documents "reviewed" and stamped by
P.E.s, rather than have the entire project under their direct
supervision and responsible charge. In my book, this is criminal.
The biggest fallacy is that you
can have U.S. engineers with little or no design experience
and mentoring exposure function as project managers on these
internationally designed projects. I guess ENR subscribes
to the old engineers’ adage: "Those who can, do
the design, and those who can’t, manage the project."
This will never work in the long run.
The second biggest fallacy is that
the best and brightest young people will want to enter the
engineering "profession" in the future. If we continue
down this road, the only thing to look forward to will be
a short career with ever decreasing salary scales because
of foreign competition.
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