Career Advice – Design Experience Getting Offshored

[ovenbaked_cookie]

I’m a Bridge Engineer based in New Zealand with 6 years of experience. Early in my career, I was lucky to be involved in full design delivery—from concept through to construction—on several bridges including a steel truss and Super-T bridge. Lately, however, my company (like many others) has shifted to offshoring most design work (to Manila, Dhaka, SA, India, etc.), leaving local teams to handle project management and construction phase services.

While I’m grateful for my past experience, I’m concerned about my ability to continue growing technically—especially in structural design and number crunching. I’m also worried about the next generation of grads missing out entirely.

I’m not looking to change careers, but I’m wondering whether I should pivot into a niche to stay relevant and deepen my expertise—like learning geotechnical basics for better soil-structure interaction understanding, or seismic design, or advanced modelling. Alternatively, maybe I should look for firms or roles where design still happens locally.

Has anyone else faced this dilemma? Would love to hear how others are navigating this shift in our industry.

 

[jhnblgr]

Seems like a national security, legal and ethical issue. Not sure how the laws are set up down there but in America you have to be a design professional in each state you want to practice engineering and typically government agencies require firms to meet certain criteria. You might want to approach you political representatives with your concerns since they might not fully understand the issue at hand.

 

[JStructsteel]

I’m a Bridge Engineer based in New Zealand with 6 years of experience. Early in my career, I was lucky to be involved in full design delivery—from concept through to construction—on several bridges including a steel truss and Super-T bridge. Lately, however, my company (like many others) has shifted to offshoring most design work (to Manila, Dhaka, SA, India, etc.), leaving local teams to handle project management and construction phase services.

While I’m grateful for my past experience, I’m concerned about my ability to continue growing technically—especially in structural design and number crunching. I’m also worried about the next generation of grads missing out entirely.

I’m not looking to change careers, but I’m wondering whether I should pivot into a niche to stay relevant and deepen my expertise—like learning geotechnical basics for better soil-structure interaction understanding, or seismic design, or advanced modelling. Alternatively, maybe I should look for firms or roles where design still happens locally.

Has anyone else faced this dilemma? Would love to hear how others are navigating this shift in our industry.

Dont worry, they will get what they pay for. It may seem cheaper up front, but in the end...

 

[DrZoidberWoop]

I don't know how to fix it and I'm becoming pessimistic. I tried not to rant, but I failed.

My field is structural steel fabrication in the USA. Offshoring in structural engineering is the new norm and it really sucks, and it's been really ramping up lately. We allocate roughly 3 to 6% of contract pricing for detailing/BIM. This usually isn't enough to employ domestic detailing houses, so it goes to India.

I just finished up a job in NYC where the structural engineering team was lead by a figurehead of sorts, whose major role was to manage a team of Indians (more like herding cats) on the other side of the world. I direct my team of Indian detailers/modelers for shop drawing production. So I had to design the steel, send it to 1) an EOR for approval and 2) to my offshore detailing team. In turn, the EOR delegated his design/drawing review to his offshore team and then followed up as a glorified stamper. I only noticed this when I scrutinized the names of the workers doing the actual engineering review for the EOR. I think people forget that Bluebeam has an "unflatten" function and we can see the names of the commenters and checkers, who are easy to find on Linkedin. These guys hop from company to company over there and I'm convinced they don't have any true interest or investment in the work they are doing.

For me, it's turning into a big circle of fake and stupid engineering that is going to end in disaster. I have come across so many non-compliant, dangerous, and potentially deadly details that I am no longer shocked by their incompetence. I don't think anything will change until we have the next Hyatt Regency disaster and this mode of operation is thrust into the spotlight.

As for the next generation, we hardly ever hire interns or untrained grads anymore. I feel bad for youngsters that are starting out. There will always be a need for project managers and hyper competent people to manage the lower-paid technical workers, but I don't know the best way forward.

 

[Rabbit12]

I'll rant a bit too. This practice is becoming common and is likely to get worse. I work for a large engineering firm and my company has a large team overseas. We are being pushed by upper management to use them more and more. I hate it.

They have zero field experience. I have an individual on my US team that is a 10+ structural engineer. They have been on a project site 2 times in their career because they spent the first 9+ years working for a support engineering firm overseas doing work for US companies. Creates an engineer who has analysis knowledge but no practical knowledge of what makes a good design.

I will say this. My team has a robust calc/drawings checking process that we adhere to. We are forcing our overseas counterparts to create comprehensive calc packages that are then checked by our US team. We are also meeting regularly with them to monitor design and answer questions and provide guidance.

 

[SWComposites]

if it makes you all feel better, the same thing is happening in throughout the aerospace industry.

 

[KootK]

I experience this is in kind of a weird way as a sole practitioner. I'm currently considering partnering with an engineer in the developing world if I can find the right person.

I face the same pressures everybody else does, just at a much smaller scale. My interest in offshoring is less about making more money and more about being able to drift over into new spaces that I'm interested in without wholly abandoning my old clients. The new stuff requires my personal attention.

I've attempted similar things in the past and the issue that I've encountered is that, very quickly, the capable foreign engineer that I trust scales his or her operation up such that quality goes way down and, more worryingly, I no longer really even know who's doing the work. For all I know, my guy's hairdresser is sizing my beams after hours.

To be clear, I do sympathize with this scaling up of overseas teams. Everybody's got to make a buck and the less affluent your part of the world is, the more pressure there is to do that. I'm sure that I'd be doing it too were roles reversed.

As frustrating as my past experiences with offshoring have been, it points interestingly towards the validity of the regulatory boards' usual positions on this: thou shall only offshore if the offshored folks are part of the same corporate organization. Rules schmooles... if I don't have that kind of control, I can't seem to get quality work from overseas people at any price. So control is a functional necessity it seems. The rule checks out.

So I'm hoping to partner with an individual overseas engineer rather than a "team". I have overseas teams approach me on linked in weekly. My hope would be that I could pay that one person a ridiculous hourly rate and have them work only with me. Or, at the least, there would be transparency regarding how much work they are doing with other people etc. It's hard to know if all of this is just fanciful wishing.

With all of that for context... back to the specific question.

One of the things that I would offer a prospective overseas partner is technical mentoring from me. I don't know of a way to say this without it sounding like a brag so I'll dispense with trying: a lot of folks value me for my technical skills and regularly express interest in being technically mentored by me.

But, then, there would definitely be something a bit heartbreaking about the main beneficiary of my mentoring not being someone local.

I struggle with the ethics of local vs global citizenship. On some level perhaps it is more fair and more generous to help out someone overseas who is worse off than an EIT across town. One of the things that keeps me on Eng-Tips, as apposed to alternative spaces, is actually the developing world contingent present here. I don't really want to sequester myself off with only my own tribe. If my golden doodle showed any interest in statics, I'd be all over that.

 

[KootK]

leaving local teams to handle project management and construction phase services.

I have worked within larger teams where this has been the case and, without question, it has stunted the technical growth of the folks on the project management side. And, to some extent, one simply cannot manage something that they themselves cannot do. As a result, while cost and schedule can be managed well remotely, it can be a real challenge to do the same for technical quality if you lack staff that still has a good feel for what the answers need to be.

 

[Greenalleycat]

This happened to a mate on structural work in NZ. Their company had a Vietnamese office and a project that had been promised to him got offshored to Vietnam instead. He was doing the PM role and getting frustrated because the Vietnamese team would not show initiative and would replicate whatever they were given (+/- some language barrier issues with notes). I'm not sure it was actualy more efficient than getting work done in NZ. He no longer works there and is now at a better firm that keeps all their work within NZ.

I also heard that the Vietnamese office got pissed off as they realised they were doing Kiwi work but getting paid Vietnamese wages so that the head corporate could make a buck. Not sure how that finished.