Seems like since the merger, no work if any has come in for downstream - existing projects are running their course and that's it, existing proposals not receiving much support or dropped. Maybe it's true that only technology and tanks mattered.
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At least our safety metric will be better
Gang busters? Haven’t seen any technology awards in a while. The ones they were awarded where in China and I don’t think they were big money. The buy those to stack the reference list.
Don’t get me wrong. I hope they are gangbusters but haven’t seen any proof of that but I keep hearing that they play second or third to other technology companies.
Technology is going like gangbusters I hear from my colleagues. 2018 will be the best year in history of Technology group is shat they say.
Ironic. Folks in SPS thought all the new contracts were in E&C. If ya’ll aren’t getting new contracts and SPS ain’t getting new contracts, who is?!
EC is labor intensive and expensive, US EC even more expensive.
Mngt wants standard product lines to stamp out with little customization, less Const and even less new Eng. Offshore work in the Arabian Gulf with cheap Far East labor is the business model, high cost Americans on US EC projects is not. CBI did the same thing with the cap serv businesses they didnt really want but came with Shaw, kept them around, undernourished them, then sold them off to APTIM. EC will see the same fate. Give it till year end for the announcement. It will make the stock pop right before earnings or at least confuse the analysts.
Good news, you need to take a hard look at CB&I Management. Their track record speaks for itself.
building a new kind of company means we're actually tearing up two companies?
Thank you CB&I Houston. You let Project Management and Purchasing run over the so called engineers while turning the so called engineers into clerks with CMS. You so smart! Here is your sign!
it won't end with winner take all. Customers will keep an oligopoly alive, playing us against the others, paying subsistence level. Prices stay low, profits steady, new capital will look elsewhere. We will spend our days pruning our balance sheet. We are painting ourselves into a corner. Next oil collapse will force Into a merged. This is not New", not visionary. This happened over & over the last 100 years in all Us industries, speeded up by politicians selling "free trade" as good for workers. The people who walk away winners are execs who get payouts. Look at CBI. They didn't care about you or CBI. Our execs don't care either, they just want their payout.
E&C is hard to export to low cost geographies. Mngt can move E but big E&C projects need higher tech skills than the simple computer modeling by India. Real E is tied to P, PM. And C means boots on the ground wherever. Modularization is possible but there's local content and moving mods costs $$. So E&C is not a good fit with this New UNkind of Company's 1990s business model of standardisation/ commoditisation of products, breaking down steps like an assembly line, pushing EVERYTHING overseas to the lowest cost location, driving out high cost labor. That's you. Goodbye high cost overhead. Goodbye high tech services. Hello assembly line Model Ts of the energy business. Low cost, low margin, high volume. This a race to the bottom market share grab. The fastest is the "path dependent winner take all" right? This New UNkind of Company has NO use for experienced skilled employees.
But someone else will grab the high value projects. Go work for them. But now before your skills atrophy here and nobody else will hire you.
EC is high risk. Big profits, huge losses if not done right. MII's capital can't absorb losses with all that new debt. CBI mastered EC but got sloppy and f---ed up a few projects. BYE CBI! MII thought EC was like topsides or subsea, had no idea what they were getting into. Pure hubris. I would have loved to see them as reality dawned. Hopefully they wised up. Too bad that means letting the big harvest wither on the vine. All those CBI EC people who are leaving ARE the EC business.