Our clients' contractual demands are well defined and known. Most involve a combination of schedule certainty, price certainty, and undeniably, high levels of quality, reliability, and safety. To that end, our clients also demand “faster, better, cheaper,” with compressed schedules and performance guarantees often driving goals that can be in conflict in the heat of the construction phase. More and more, the typical client is less sensitive to the actual manufacturing origin of the products used in building their plants, and cares more for the best price for the product and service provided by the EPC contractor. For pipe, valves, and fittings, that typically means suitable and fit for purpose and within the limits and tolerances of the governing specification, and not much else.
Most of us have witnessed a step-change shift in the location of the manufacturing plants that provide the majority of the standardized, interchangeable piping commodity items. As it appears today, the more standardized the piping commodity, the more likely it is to be supplied from an emerging source, such as China and South Korea, India, and in some cases, Thailand, Malaysia, and other low-cost production economies, including many former Soviet-bloc nations. This is certainly true in the manufacture of cast commodity gate, globe, and check valves. Also, high-volume consumption items, such as fittings and flanges in standard grades and sizes of carbon steel and, to an increasing extent, 304 and 316 grade stainless steels, are being produced in countries that, only as recently as 10 years ago, most people would not even consider a viable source of products of reasonable quality and reliability.