European engineering companies may be aware of the potential savings of moving production abroad, but not many are considering outsourcing their engineering. Jon Severn spoke with Ajit Prabhu, whose company partners with engineering firms to provide engineering resources based in India and China. Stopping unscheduled downtime is one of the core objectives of organisations that own and operate process manufacturing facilities, utilities and other major assets and infrastructure. Every organisation knows the commercial value of its throughput, which makes downtime easier to quantify than ever before. Nothing about the CSPC Nanhai Petrochemical Complex is small. The site covers 4.27 square kilometres (1.65 square miles). Once it is completed next year, the complex will include 11 process and utility units, as well as a multitude of other buildings and offices. At its heart is a world-scale ethylene cracker capable of producing at least 800000 tons of ethylene and 430000 tons of propylene a year. In all, the complex will turn out some 2.3million tonss of products annually.