Is that by any chance an infelicitous euphemism for "n****** engineering"?
As if that sort of jury-rigging was the norm in the South, and nobody had ever heard of, say, NASA, whose engineering is sometimes called "rocket science"?
You got it! Personally never called nor heard anyone else routinely call it “Southern Engineering” just heard it, but one has to be very very careful EVEN HERE.
The Oil Patch ain’t NASA (or what we used to have called NASA)and lots of “..... engineering” goes on by the hands just to work around the nutty stuff flowing like the stuff we see on the ROV cams, from the Engineers AND to get the job done.