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G.
Scott Harding is the third member of his family to run F.B. Harding
Inc. He’s changed some of what his grandfather and father had in
place – and kept some things the same.
Asked about the safety awards found on www.fbharding.com, he notes that the company needs to add a few
(to the site) that it’s won more recently. “We have a family feeling
here, something that is probably just a bit old-fashioned,” Harding
says. “I grew up with some of these people. I know their families –
I know their kids.
“You know – we’ve had some fellows retire here, people
who had spent their whole careers at Harding. I think that’s pretty
neat.
“We do a lot of safety and other training. My portion of
the safety talk to any crew is usually real short. I usually tell
them that, at the end of the day, we have to get everyone home
safely. I ask them to avoid putting me in a position where I have to
call their spouse and say, ‘he got hurt on the job’.”
That focus on safety has won two IEC/CNA awards for
Harding recently (one for 2006, another for 2007). There is a bonus
that comes with a focus on safety, Harding readily admits – higher
productivity due to better morale.
Changing estimating approach
F.B. Harding pursues a mix of hard-bid and negotiated work, almost
all of it in the commercial category. What’s changed in the past
dozen years isn’t necessarily the client list or work type, but the
way projects are estimated.
“We have five people who do estimating and/or project
management,” Harding says. “There was a point, back in the 1990s,
where we had three people – different people – who did estimating,
including my dad (F.B. Harding Jr.).
“They used yellow pads. We soon after switched to the
McCormick Systems approach, which has greatly assisted our company
in moving to higher profitability.”
Switching to computerized estimating, even in the 1990s,
was controversial. “I told my dad that, if we took one job and had
all three of them do an estimate, there was no way it would come out
the same. It wouldn’t have been far off, but the difference would
have been noticeable.
“That isn’t what we were looking for. We wanted
consistency. We wanted speed. The McCormick software has provided
that. If we were to lose it now, it would be a calamity for us.”
Firing an estimator
One
of the company’s estimator/project managers, for a long time, was
Scott Harding. He doesn’t do it now, he notes – because he was fired
from that job!
“One of our foremen fired me as a project manager and
estimator,” Harding recalls, laughing. “He said – ‘You’re running
crazy. You’re busy in meetings. I feel bad if I have to bother you.
You just can’t run projects anymore.’
“He was right; it was true. Some projects in which we’re
involved generate a constant flow of issues and questions. If I’m in
some meeting, as a contractor, on something else . . . for, say,
five hours – which means I’m unavailable – that puts us behind. We
can’t have that.”
Software matters more now
Harding’s people put the McCormick software to work at many tasks.
For example, the company, at least once a month, calculates its Cost
To Complete the projects on which it is working.
“Surprises generally aren’t good in this business,”
Harding notes. “We do our Cost To Complete analysis – sometimes
twice a month – to figure out what’s left to do. McCormick helps us
get that done quickly, which enables us do it more than once a month
on projects that need it.
“That helps us minimize surprises.”
These days, the speed and consistency of McCormick’s
software are especially valued. “Recently, we’ve seen a few
commercial jobs on which there are 20 bidders. It’s a result of the
current conditions, the disappearance of residential work, and so
forth,” Harding says.
“What I appreciate about the McCormick approach is that
they seem to look for new ways to make the system better – faster
and more versatile. Sometimes, to tell the truth, it takes us a
little while to catch up on these new tricks. That’s why we send at
least one of our people to the User’s Conference every year.”
Harding himself used to attend, he says . . . back
before he was fired from the estimating/project management job!
Harding not only talks the talk on these various issues, he walks
the walk. “We came to a point on one project where a customer wanted
us to do something, and because of safety issues, we refused. The
customer said, in no uncertain terms, ‘If you don’t do this, you’re
fired and won’t do our next project.’
“We refused; and we did not get any more work. You can't
just talk about safety – and then make a whole bunch of exceptions.
It takes investment and commitment,” Harding claims.
Here’s the best part of that story: Some years later,
that safety-unconscious customer changed its stripes . . . and hired
F.B. Harding back.
Estimating – Art or Science?
Estimating consistency pays off, Harding feels: “In our group, we
have one person who does project management but does very little
estimating, and there’s another who does mostly estimating, The
other three are estimator/project managers.
“Sometimes one will estimate and another will run the
project; other times the same person will estimate and run a job.
There are different situations – all the time. That’s why we must
have consistency in our estimates, which McCormick delivers.”
Is estimating an art or a science? Harding’s
answer: “The older fellows (those old estimators) felt that
estimating was an art – that they would lose the ‘feel’ of things if
they abandoned their pencil and yellow pad.
“They weren’t completely wrong. But for 90% of
most projects, estimating isn’t an art. It’s about getting the nuts
and bolts of a job behind you – so you can apply your knowledge to
that last 10%. We move faster in doing this thanks to the McCormick
software.”
See Us In Vegas
McCormick Systems will exhibit its electrical and ABS estimating
systems May 7-9 in Las Vegas at the ABC Construction Education
Conference. For more information, click here.
From The Media
Time
Saved, Errors Eliminated:
Autodesk Subcontractor
Partners With
McCormick Systems
Electrical and automated building systems
contractors first estimate projects before bidding or
negotiating them. What happens when they win the job?
In many cases, contractor
personnel must re-keystroke the same information from their
job estimate into different project management documentation
software. The keystroking is duplicative and can cause
other problems.
In addition to eating up valuable time,
the re-keying effort introduces the real possibility of
clerical errors.
To make such problems go
away, McCormick Systems and Autodesk® Subcontractor have
successfully integrated their systems – thanks in large part
to the recent separate introductions of McCormick’s V9.0
software and Autodesk® Subcontractor 2009.
What
that means: Contractors using McCormick to estimate
electrical and/or ABS jobs and Subcontractor 2009 to
optimize, standardize and automate their business processes
will now save time, avoid errors, and seamlessly transfer
data from the estimating to the project management side.
“We chose
McCormick Systems as our partner in this effort because we
feel they go about construction estimating the right way,"
said Jeff Burmeister, product manager for Autodesk® Subcontractor. “They have the kind of clients that
will appreciate our project management documentation tools.”
“Autodesk
is the leading software developer in the construction
industry,” said Todd McCormick, president of McCormick
Systems. “We’ve worked together for months to solidify this
partnership – to create a solid foundation. We think we can
build on this start, together, for the benefit of our mutual
clients.”
About Autodesk® Subcontractor
Autodesk® Subcontractor
software helps to increase productivity by automating
document management. Autodesk Subcontractor gives
contractors the tools necessary to convey a professional
image to clients, while helping improve document management
processes.
More information: http://autodesk.com/subcontratctor or 800.374.2260.
About McCormick Systems
Privately owned McCormick Systems
(Chandler, AZ) is the nation’s leader in software used for
electrical and ABS estimating and project management. The
company’s products enable contractors to quickly produce
consistent, profitable estimates for electrical and
voice-data-video work, and more.
More information: www.mccormicksys.com or 800-444-4890.
Guest
Commentary: From www.EleBlog.com
On Compact Fluorescents (CFLs)
LIGHTING DESIGNERS -- the IALD has issued a position statement on
incandescent bulb bans. Included among 7 bullets in the thing:
Energy-efficient replacement
light sources must be adapted to suit the existing
electrical infrastructure. Those with simple and clear-cut
applications must be made available as soon as proven, but
there will be cases in which an efficient source is not
ready for a particular use. When products cannot achieve
appropriate goals, continuance of incandescent technology
specific to those situations should be permitted.
Yep. Read the other 6 points.
There's a lot to think about here. My interpretation of the IALD
statement is that it boils down to one word . . . Whoa!
- - - - -
NEMA ADDRESSES FEARS -- the electrical manufacturers'
group has issued a white paper (available FREE) addressed,
apparently, to consumers. Despite that, the title they came up with
was "Failure Modes for Self-Ballasted Compact Fluorescent Lamps - A
NEMA Update." Catchy, eh? NEMA's release says it:
addresses these concerns and explains in simplified terms
why SBCFLs have different failure modes from normal
incandescent lamps; how existing product standards meet
safety requirements; and what the industry, standards
development organizations, and third-party safety agencies
have done and are doing to minimize any potential safety
risk from SBCFLs.
I am fairly
certain that turning CFLs into SBCFLs is not a consumer service.
- - - - -
NBC NEWS FANS FEARS -- an item posted to the CE Pro website carries the headline "CFL
Cleanup: Harder Than It Sounds" and includes an embedded
video of an NBC Nightly News segment on what happens when a CFL bulb
breaks ("and mercury leaks out").
The 2-minute video deals with two main CFL
issues, both stemming from the fact that the things include Mercury:
a. Whaddya do when the light bulb breaks? A Maine woman is shown; she asked local authorities and was
eventually referred to a company that would charge her $2,000 for
cleanup. That will pay for a lot of incandescent bulbs -- which you
can buy now and store for future use!
b. Whaddya do when the bulb reaches the
end of its useful life? There's still mercury in the damn thing.
NBC News says: Take it to a household hazardous waste disposal
facility. Hey, good luck with that! Unless you have a lot of HHW to
get rid of on a regular basis (how much of that stuff do you use
regularly), that means you'll have to STOCKPIILE used CFLs somewhere
(safe) in your house, and (eventually) dump 'em all at once.
. . . so you don't blow the energy (and
money) saved driving a few CFLs to the HHW site.
- - - -
ELEBLOG TAKE:
Here's a good bet: You won't drive one used
CFL at a time to the HHW site (unless you are out of your mind). So
you'll create a space in your house -- the top shelf of a closet,
maybe -- where you'll put a box of dead CFLs, with the idea being
that you'll "eventually" get those bulbs to the right disposal site.
[What
about making HHW disposal more convenient? I guess that
could happen. This is actually something I wrote about in
the 1980s, when I was editor of Waste Age magazine.
Costs to municipalities of holding
special "HHW days" are very high -- they are, after all,
CONCENTRATING all of the HHW in their communities when they
collect it in one place. That's risky (the municipal
employees doing the collection, if that's the way your local
entity chooses to pursue it, have to wear moon suits!
Another option is to hire a special waste management
company, at a very elevated cost, to do this work).
The costs are so high that, for just
about every city and town, conducting HHW collections
routinely is out of the question.
What was worse is that, in the 1980s,
participation in special HHW collection days was very, very
low. So you had (back then, anyway) a High-Cost,
Low-Effectiveness event that greatly elevated risk. No one
wanted that!!!]
My bet is that the following happens:
1. You forget
the box of bulbs over time. Or you keep adding to it, but you never
"get a roun tuit" . . . you never actually drive that to the local
HHW collection facility, or manage to get it out of the closet and
to the locale where they are collecting HHW on one special weekend
each Spring.
2. Folks in your house (you, your wife, your
kids, whoever) eventually find that box when you're ready to move. I
believe in the hustle and bustle of Moving Day, you'll throw those
bulbs in the trash. What are the chances that the special HHW
collection day will be on the weekend the moving truck is coming?
What's the realistic chance that, in the midst of all of those
moving checklist items, you'll find 40 minutes to drive to a place
that will safely dispose of those CFLs?
3. Or you'll just start throwing the CFLs in
the trash one at a time (reasoning -- what could that possibly
hurt?). The chief thing will be: Let's get that hazardous waste
thing out of the house, now that it's no longer useful.
- - - - -
Here's the thing: CFL market share ran up
last year -- 180 million of them were sold to American consumers.
According to the DOE, that gave CFLs a 20% share of domestic bulb
use. Unless much more efficient incandescents are developed -- or
LEDs become a lot cheaper (which is the EleBlog hope!) -- by 2016
every screw-in socket in your house, when replaced, will sport a
CFL.
If all of this seems like "much ado about
nothing," you are wrong. Mercury doesn't belong in the same
environment with human beings. The environmental people (I'm a
tree-hugger, so I'm on that team) have been very clear about the
risks of mercury. Now, some of the same people are advocating CFLs
because they use less energy than incandescents.
Above, some things -- pro and con -- for you
to take a look at. I've read and watched this stuff, and the
previous volumes of info, about CFLs. I'm against them just on the
mercury angle.
. . . And I've not even dealt here with the
fact that CFLs provide lousy light and are bad for some people (like
my wife).
. . . posted by EleBlog proprietor Joe Salimando on 3/30/08
McCormick 2008 Calendar --
Dates For
Your Planning
We'd like to talk with you. Please consider coming to see us at the
shows listed below.
May 7-9, Las Vegas, NV -- ABC Construction Education Conference Elect/Mech
Sept. 29-Oct. 2, Las Vegas, NV -- BICSI Fall
Conference.
Oct. 4-7, Chicago, IL -- NECA Show
Oct. 30-31, Atlanta, GA -- IEC Electric Expo.
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