...Dalal Mott Macdonald, is its only permanent British expatriate. The labor cost difference is dramatic. "You can live [in India] very comfortably for salaries that are one-fifth to one-tenth U.K. levels," he says.

At its Ahmedabad office in Gujarat state, Mott now deploys up to 20 engineers for U.K. water jobs. With the first four jobs under way, local engineers focus on hydraulic and structural design and reinforced concrete detailing, with conceptual design still in the U.K. Lee praises locals’ competence and energy but concedes that some structural design skills have needed honing. "We are encouraging customers to do a reality check in Ahmedabad," White says.

Setting up such an operation is "not something you do overnight," Lee says. Mott had to establish a secure internet-based virtual private network linking its Indian and U.K. units and has spent time blending business practices, such as quality controls and CAD standards. Reciprocal staff visits have helped transfer U.K. practices to Ahmedabad, says Lee.

Last month, Mott moved to replicate the idea with a structural design team formed in Chenai, formerly Madras, says Lee. "We have to convince people that this is not business they are losing but an opportunity to create business we would not have otherwise," he adds.

At least one U.S. owner agrees. "I don’t think U.S. jobs are being lost, they’re being gained," says Jim Porter, vice president of engineering for DuPont Co., Wilmington, Del. "We get more construction for our money; we’re able to build more projects and we have more work for the majority of vendors." He says DuPont has offshored construction for "at least a decade," but still uses it for less than 2% of total project spending. "We make certain that contractor arrangements make business sense," says Porter. Proprietary process-related work is exempt.

BE&K Inc., Birmingham, Ala., is a DuPont contractor, whose joint venture with Kvaerner includes detailed design work offshored in Mumbai, says Dennis Schroeder, president of BE&K Engineering Inc. The firm also has a unit in Poland, "and we have used it to do some tasks for us," he says. But Schroeder says managing offshored work is not cheap. "It can cost $300,000 to $500,000 to put an expat over there to supervise," he says.

Parsons’ Moore says low cost "comes with complications." She says "the logistics of carving up a project to make sure the pieces fit together is difficult." Moore notes that corporate executives eventually decided that "it was not in Parsons’ best interest" to continue supporting the firm’s Filipino engineering center. Other sources say large U.S. offshorers such as Bechtel and Jacobs are feeling the effects of growing staff turnover as local professionals seek better compensation deals.

Offshoring opponents claim that use of overseas personnel may violate state "responsible charge" rules. Structural engineers in Georgia convinced the state licensing board last year to clarify rules on oversight of offshored work, says Jim Case, president of Uzun & Case, Atlanta, and former president of the Structural Engineers Association of Georgia. "We wanted to make sure you couldn’t outsource and still be in compliance just by stamping drawings," he says.

Others are concerned that offshoring could spread details of critical infrastructure to outsiders, even terrorists. "When we map for a county government, we’re mapping everything–treatment plants, airports, etc.," says Woolpert’s Cowden. "To have this go overseas, bothers me."

Some owners believe that’s enough risk to justify a ban on offshoring. "I have a hard enough time with work going out of the county," says Maria Lehman, public works commissioner for Erie County, N.Y., which includes Buffalo. "We’re still battling terrorism; we can’t make it easy." She says her agency will not even let many Canadian firms compete. "Offshoring is a way to do more with less," Lehman says. "But there’s no coincidence between identity theft and how much banks and credit card companies are offshoring."

Schroeder also worries that offshoring requires "putting our intellectual property overseas" and that entry-level engineering jobs may be lost to future generations. Others agree. "One of my biggest concerns, if all production work ends up offshore...