With equipment manufacturers becoming increasingly specialized, what is the need for design companies anymore?
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Currently, equipment manufacturers that produce MVR systems are able to provide a complete set of drawings, including detailed process flow diagrams, equipment layout plans, piping diagrams, and other documents that are essentially equivalent to construction drawings, along with the relevant equipment. In other words, these materials cover virtually all aspects related to the construction of wastewater treatment systems. It is foreseeable that in the future, various other equipment manufacturers will become increasingly specialized, and companies that produce reactors and other types of equipment will gradually be able to achieve the same level of performance as those who manufacture MVR equipment today. Then, with these equipment manufacturers becoming increasingly specialized, what is still the need for engineering design companies whose work involves creating process flow diagrams, equipment layout plans, piping diagrams, and other types of construction drawings? (Is it just the stamping left?)
General layout, logistics, power balance, building structure, geological treatment! Do you think a design institute is only for piping work? The various specialized skills involved are not within the scope of what a equipment manufacturing factory is capable of handling. If such a factory did possess these skills, it would have long since grown into a corporate group of that scale. MVR can merely be considered a type of modular installation capability; it’s far from being considered true design expertise
I think what the original poster is referring to is mainly the aspect of construction drawings; indeed, design firms are faced with challenges from equipment manufacturers. For the constructor, having the equipment manufacturer provide complete sets can save a significant amount on design costs – so why not do it?
Equipment manufacturers have this capability, which would greatly simplify things for design firms. However, many process parameters still need to be determined by the design firms, which play a role in coordinating everything. As mentioned earlier, if an equipment manufacturer truly had the ability to handle all the tasks that usually fall on design firms, I think it would be possible for them to start their own design firm instead of remaining just an equipment manufacturer.
However, its construction drawings are not comprehensive enough; general plans, power distribution systems, and the like are usually absent. There is also a lack of a deep understanding of the standards, and some aspects are not quite appropriate. Furthermore, from the perspective of civil engineering construction drawings, manufacturers of MVR system schematics generally do not take into account factors such as seismic loads, snow loads, and wind loads; as a result, the beams and columns appear to be relatively small, but this is not an acceptable approach for design purposes. Only normal production conditions are taken into account; extreme conditions such as earthquakes are ignored.
The design requires a systematic approach to the project, with close collaboration among all relevant specialties; it involves issues related to engineering experience and expertise, and team work is carried out following proper procedures. Incidentally, there is still a difference between amateur renovation teams and professional renovation companies. Design institutes are like regular military forces; their designers receive systematic training, and their qualifications, as well as their knowledge, experience, and insights, are generally quite high. Engineering experience and project management should be the core competitiveness of design institutes at present (excluding process technology).
The difference between one-sided and comprehensive approaches means that equipment manufacturers cannot replace design firms~~ Equipment manufacturers can provide design firms or factories with professional services such as product selection and maintenance~~
This post was last edited by Grizzly on 2016-3-29 at 13:59. Calling an MVR a design is not appropriate… Design institutes refer to this as a package; what’s created is what’s inside the dashed lines in that package. To do design work, one needs to handle several projects worth over 200 million each. (Of course, working on small projects has its own advantages.) Because many aspects such as design, particularly project management and coordination, cannot be fully demonstrated in projects with a budget of less than 200 million.
Why is 200 million used as a measure of scale?
In typical design firms, projects worth over 200 million RMB are considered large-scale projects; such firms have an organizational structure similar to that of foreign companies, and their management styles are also akin to those of foreign firms.
Indeed, there are more and more packaging devices available these days, but all the packages still need to be connected in series; utility systems must be connected as well, and the process conditions for the packages need to be improved. It is also necessary to check whether these requirements are met. There is still a lot of work to be done by the design institute; for turnkey projects, there is no essential difference between an equipment package and a valve.