Ron Merrick, P.E., is one of those increasingly rare individuals: he has spent his entire professional career
at one company. Merrick has been at Fluor for 34 years
and is currently director of piping material engineering and
a Senior Fluor Fellow. In that capacity, he is “the person at
the corporate level who keeps an eye on valve requirements
and other piping material; not just valves, but basically
anything that’s round with liquid in it,” he says. But his
involvement in the industry runs deeper than his job at
Fluor: he’s vice chair of the American Petroleum Institute’s
(API) Downstream Piping and Valves Manufacturers and
Contractors subcommittee, and he’s president of the PVF
Roundtable.
Merrick is also a member of the Stainless Steel World
America Steering Committee, a member of the Valve World
conference Members Steering Committee, and a presenter of
papers on valve testing and standardization. He also is author
of Valve Selection and Specification Guide, published in 1991 by
Von Nostrand Reinhold.
Merrick graduated in December 1974 with a degree in
Mechanical Engineering from Wichita State University, then
was offered a job at Fluor for piping material takeoff, “which
is literally sitting at a drawing board looking at isometrics and
listing the materials drawn,” he says. After working in pipe
stress, he got into material specifications, a fairly new field at
the time, but one that suited him, he says.
STANDARDIZATION
Merrick has had a chance to practice his strong support for
standardization not just at Fluor, but through his extensive
outside professional activities. At Fluor, he has as many as
200 projects going on at once around the world. He provides
“the basis, the descriptions, the reference facts and so on”
for the people involved, who then go on to customize this
framework into their particular requirements. These
reference facts include valve descriptions, piping and fitting
descriptions and the basic piping specs. Fluor uses an
automated piping material system with the aim of having a
single point of entry into the system: a description is written
once, then when data is retrieved—be it a requisition, a
picking ticket in the field or something else—“it [the system]
all looks at that same piece of data,” he explains.
As vice chair of the API downstream subcommittee, he carries out the subcommittee’s mission, which is to provide leg-islative/regulatory impact guidance and to develop standards
for safety and environmental responsibility. Because API is
ANSI-accredited, the subcommittee must meet regularly to
help reaffirm or reissue standards.
Since 1998, Merrick has served as president of the PVF
Roundtable, a group that gives its valve and piping industry
members a chance to meet and exchange ideas in the informal
setting of General Assembly meetings. Like API’s subcommittee, the organization also sets up task groups for
standards consideration. For example, the group “did a lot of
work that culminated in PMI [Positive Material Identification]
standards,” Merrick explains. The group’s effort was then
turned over to ASTM, which issued ASTM-E1916.
CHINA AND CHALLENGES
Merrick takes advantage of his extensive travel in the U.S.
and abroad to visit valve manufacturers. He says that China is
at the center of what he considers a major trend in the valve
industry over the past five years: Western companies partnering with foreign companies, moving or outsourcing to there. In
China, this has meant considerable time and effort to get that
country’s products up to Western quality standards, he says.
He doesn’t discredit those who point out the very real problem
of product counterfeiting, however. When it comes to Chinese
products shipped to the U.S., he looks for products from Chinese facilities of Western companies because “they can provide their own ways of identifying product so we know what is
genuine.”
When asked about the biggest challenges valve users and
the industry face currently, Merrick identifies standardization
as well as the current business climate. Still, he views standardization as more of an opportunity than a burden. As
examples, he points to adoption of common standards by the
Norwegian oil industry and a similar move by the German
chemical industry. In the U.S., he points out what the Process
Industry Practices organization is doing: publishing documents that harmonize engineering standards across different
engineering disciplines. “What that does is give much more
interchangeability and much more uniformity,” he says, as
well as ensure products from multiple manufacturers will
work—and fit—together.
What he sees as a significant challenge today is the reduction of capital expenditures. The huge wave of construction
that occurred when times were good was followed by a significant slowing that should continue for the next few years with
the result that “the demand for products in the U.S. may be
slowing,” Merrick says.
As far as what’s ahead personally for Merrick, he says he
doesn’t see himself retiring anytime soon. What he has in mind
instead “is gradually retrenching and spending more time
doing just the parts of the business that [he likes], focusing on
things that [he is] really good at and can make a contribution
on, and more or less fading away.” VM
PETER CLEAVELAND is a contributing editor to Valve Magazine. Reach him at
pcleaveland@earthlink.net.
