I spent 7 years waiting for someone to build the engineering software I actually needed.
As a petroleum engineer, I used the same tools everyone else used: Autodesk for CAD, Excel for everything else, and a filing cabinet’s worth of standards that hadn’t been cross-referenced since the last OSHA audit.
The software existed for the glamorous parts of engineering — parametric modeling, CFD simulation, reservoir modeling at $50K/seat. But for the daily work that actually keeps a facility compliant and running? Nothing. Just manual processes that hadn’t changed since the 1990s.
Gap analysis? Print two standards, put them side by side, and start reading. P&ID updates? Hope the drafter is available this quarter. Equipment inspection tracking? SharePoint if you’re lucky. A spreadsheet if you’re not.
I started building because the gap between what engineers need and what the market offers is enormous. Not for the 10,000-employee EPC firms with seven-figure software budgets. For the 50-person refinery engineering team trying to stay compliant with a headcount that hasn’t grown since 2015.
NORMEX Standards AI was the first tool — automating RAGAGEP gap analysis from weeks to days. NEXUS CAD came next — browser-based 3D modeling without the Autodesk tax. Neither required a capital budget line item or an IT deployment timeline.
The hardest part of starting wasn’t the code. It was accepting that nobody was going to build this for me — and that the skills transfer from engineering to software was going to be rougher than anyone warned me about.
What engineering workflow are you still doing manually that you wish someone would just build a tool for?
#Entrepreneurship #EngineeringSoftware #Founder #PetroleumEngineering #IndustrialAI