Meet Your Team, Part 2: Our Engineers
Bob Sarber, Our Sales Engineer
Swagelok Company makes and delivers, unquestionably, the world's most dependable fluid-system products – all backed by decades of proven leak-tight performance, leading-edge innovation, unmatched technical support, a limited lifetime warranty, and, now, a powerful portfolio of complementary, truly value-added strategic services.
But customers within Swagelok Pittsburgh | Tri-State Area's sales and service territory still count most on their local Swagelok account representative for application expertise, especially in the most challenging operating conditions.
Enter Bob Sarber, one of our five on-staff Engineers.
For the past five years, Bob, who possesses a vast wealth of heat-exchanger and rotating equipment knowledge, has spent nearly two-thirds of his work time on the road providing onsite Swagelok solutions and/or suggestions to dramatically improve the safety, productivity, and profitability of his Nuclear Power, Steel, Chemical, and other customers.
"My greatest job satisfaction comes from getting to better know my contacts through daily interactions. In particular, I try hard to add real technical-application value to make these people, and, ultimately, their companies, more successful," says Sarber.
Sometimes, though, Bob's day-to-day duties are a bit more mundane.
“Of course, many clients simply want me to periodically stop by just to ensure them that their fluid system is running efficiently and that there’s no shortage of Swagelok fittings, valves, gauges, and tubing on hand.”
Bob also helps fill a critical labor gap, a direct result of recent workplace trends.
“More and more, primarily due to retirements, I see customers outsourcing work to vendors. At times, some of my key accounts simply do not have enough skilled manpower to handle all of their scheduled projects. That’s where I become the conduit between my contacts and the expanded capabilities of Swagelok Pittsburgh | Tri-State Area,” says Sarber.
For example, when a customer has a job that requires design and/or fabrication (such as a large complex instrumentation panel), Bob turns to Gary Osman, our Application Engineer, and Mike Koster, who manages our Custom Fabrication Shop in Pittsburgh. When a customer has an inquiry about Technical Training, Bob involves Mike Gagel, our dedicated Trainer and renowned global Swagelok Bending expert. Bottom Line: No matter what the customer need, Bob is fully supported by an eager and talented group of Inside Sales Reps, Energy Evaluators, Hose Advisors, Financial/Warehouse/Management Associates, and more.
In his downtime, Bob is an avid outdoorsman. He thoroughly enjoys downhill and cross-country skiing, mountain biking, and kayaking.
"I'm an adrenaline junkie: I never miss an opportunity to push myself….from bungee jumping in New Zealand to paragliding off the Klein Matterhorn in Switzerland. At least once a month, I try to do something adventurous.”
Math and Science have always come easily for Bob – in high school and during his pursuit of a Mechanical Engineering degree at West Virginia University. Those proficiencies caused his Mom to have a specific career aspiration for him:
"She's a nurse…so, naturally, she had plans for me to become a doctor," he starts with a laugh. “But one day, she had me shadow an Orthopedic Surgeon. I saw some things I was probably far too young to see – and that experience pretty much turned me away from the medical field.”
Bob resides in Ligonier with Hana, his significant other, and his 14-year-old son.