Conference 2001

Mark your calendar for McCormick systems' Conference 2001. Opening on March 28 in Arizona, by request from many of our attendees, we will be returning to Tempe's Embassy Suites Hotel. The official program opens on Wednesday, March 28 with our traditional opening reception however, for those that wish training, we have set up three schools that start the Monday prior to the start of Conference. Information on this informative and fun conference will be mailed to all McCormick users in December.

Joe McAuley

Known throughout the industry, a little over a year ago, Joe McAuley accepted a position with McCormick as Vice President of Sales. Joe, who lives in Virginia, has been involved in the marketing of computer software to the electrical industry for the past 20 years. Starting with Trade Service in 1982, Joe was one of their top sales persons in the sales of their ALEC estimating program as well as their electronic price updating programs. Then, when Trade Service sold the ALEC program to Estimation, Joe went with the product to Estimation and over the period of years, again became one of the top sales persons for Estimation. McCormick has considered Joe a friend as well as has known of his sales abilities for many years. When McCormick decided to expand its sales efforts, Joe was a natural choice. Now, with just twelve short months behind him at McCormick, Joe is right at the top of McCormick's sales charts as well as putting together a national sales staff for the marketing of the McCormick products. Joe and his wife of 21 years have 2 grown children, and when Joe is not at airports or in a contractors office, he can usually be found on the sidelines of his son's football game or at his beach cottage in North Carolina.

Version 6.0

McCormick has just shipped our latest upgrade to our WIN3/6/8000 product. Designated V6.0, this upgrade includes a complete rewrite of its file export program as well as rewriting its data import routines (hot key toTRA-SER, etc). It seems that our users are getting more and more sophisticated. With this sophistication comes the need for faster and better export routines. The McCormick product has always had export capabilities however, with the advent of all the new export needs for e-commerce, etc, it was realized that this entire area had to be completely rewritten. Although much of what has been done will not be seen by the user, it is there and, for the power users, is ready to be used. Another feature to V6.0 is the re-writing of the data import section of the program. This allows you to import material data from third party software directly into the McCormick database. In addition to being able to bring in more than one item at a time, V6.0 allows you, through a conversion table, to select any line from the data being imported to any line in the McCormick database.

The new building

Well, the new building is starting to take on a life of its own. With this new life, this is no longer a construction project but a work of art. When a person has been away from the day to day end of a construction project, he sometimes forgets about all of the "things" that it takes to make a building come together. It is kind of like climbing up a sand dune. In many cases, you climb up two steps only to slide back one. This is the way with the new McCormick building. In keeping with the rules that will allow the building to be registered as a national historical building, all original exterior walls, doors, windows, etc had to be brought back to their original condition. This included removing the paint off the brickwork, putting in new wood windows that open by sliding up and down (with sash cords and weights) as well as cleaning all the interior brick and repairing and refinishing all the hardwood flooring. Now that that is said, the brickwork, framing, roofing, plumbing, main stairs, and the HVAC have been completed. We are now looking at sprinklers and (God forbid) the electrical. When and if that gets done, it will be time to start the cover. We are getting a lot of advice on this building both from our people, the City of Chandler, as well as the people who walk by. Originally built as an IOOF building in 1928, It became the Chandler Armory in 1938. After the war ended, it was sold to a group of doctors who put their offices downstairs and made the upstairs into apartments. The building was thusly utilized in this fashion until 1990 when it was basically "boarded up" and unused for ten years. That is where we entered the picture. Armed with photos of the building from the Chandler Museum as well as talking with some of the locals who remember the building, we saw through the "improvements" that were made through the years that somehow, made the building look worse. We filled over ten "roll-off" containers as we removed all of the "improvements" bringing the building back to how it was in the past. Oh yea, when does McCormick make the move? Well, it was going to be in August however, August is past. It now looks like December will be a good month....

Using Workspaces

One of the most powerful and under-used parts of the McCormick WIN3/6/8000 estimating products is the Workspace area of the program. Basically an expansion of "Tool Bars", Workspaces allow you to set up additional "screen snapshots" to make moving around in the program easier. For you that know the DOS program, it is the F9 key. Screen snapshots basically give you the ability to open different forms on your screen and when you have just what you want, save these forms just as they are so that you can bring them all back with a simple click of a button. This is most often used in takeoff so that, as an example, you are taking off branch, you would name a sheet "branch". You would then open up two, three, four, or more database forms at the correct location ie. 1/2" emt, 3/4" emt, etc. as well as perhaps, one of the audit trails and then, go into the workspace sheet, and name and save that setup. As a further definition, Workspaces are basically a series of user-defined pages with each page having the ability to have up to over 30 snapshots. The program comes pre-set with sheets that contain most of the common takeoff needs however, most estimators, realizing the power of this part of the program, change and/or add these spaces to fit their unique needs. As a reminder, Workspaces can be reached from either the menu (under tools) or from a toolbar that has been pre-set by McCormick. To go there, just click on "Workspaces" and a list of Workspace screen will come up. Click on the screen that you wish to use and when that screen opens, choose the particular screen setup that you wish to use. Making changes is very easy. To add a new page, open the form that lists all of the pages and click on "new". This allows you to name this new page as well as to open it up. You can also delete, rename, etc. Once a new page is set up, I advise that you then name all the screen sets that you want on that page prior to capturing or making the snapshots of the screens. To do that, just pick a spot on the form that you wish to use and right click. You will then have several choices, one being "name". Give it a name and continue on to the next one. Once you have it all laid out, then, open up your databases, move to where you want to be in the base, add audit trails, menus, etc. and then open up "Workspaces" to the page you want to be on, select the name you wish to use, right click and select "snapshot". Once done, set up the next screen, snap it, and continue. No, it is not that hard and, once this part of the program is understood and used, it will speed up your estimating capabilities immensely.

Voice/Data/Video

Data McCormick has spent the last six months developing a database module for it WIN 3/6/8000 estimating product. Developed by McCormick staff member Dick Manrod, this comprehensive database includes most of the normal materials needed for estimating and ordering for this specialized type of work. This base has most common items and assemblies used in this type of work. Most items have their trade name, catalog name and number, labor, discounts, etc. All of the assemblies have unit prices that are generated from the list of items contained in the assembly. If you are considering VDV work and feel you might have the need for the database, give the office a call and we can talk it through.