Thriving While Staying Small, Idaho’s BCL Uses CAD Estimating – And More

With roughly 23,000 residents, the Idaho town of Moscow is a place where it’s good to be a locally known name. And Brent Loney’s BCL Electric is well-known – and frequently called for service work.

“We try to do small residential and small commercial work, but lately a lot of what we’re doing is service work,” Loney said. “Over 30 years, we’ve built relationships here. We’re one of those phone numbers that people keep handy.”

Loney’s father-in-law was in electrical construction and, perhaps as one result, he felt a drive to get into the business as well, he explained. At one time his company was larger than it is today, and, he said, it could have easily grown larger. “We didn’t want to go that way,” he said. “We did some traveling, and followed especially two customers."

“We got around as large as 50 employees, for a year or so. It wasn’t comfortable for me, it involved too much traveling to keep that amount of people working full time.”

So BCL is a McCormick Systems user that prefers to control growth. Having started with our software back in 1990, the company now uses the Win 12000.

A lot of windows open!
BCL’s estimator, Rick Hansen, who has been with Loney for more than 15 years, sits at a workstation with three computer screens. One of the reasons he favors McCormick’s software is that it’s easy to keep as many windows open as one might like. With three screens, that’s a lot of windows!

“We also make use of CAD Estimating,” Loney noted. “We do some design-build in here. We’re fortunate enough, I guess because of our relationships with some of the architectural firms, to get CAD drawings from them."

“The great thing about CAD Estimating is not just the time savings in the bidding process. When we bid and win a job, it makes it easier to run the job. With that software, we’re a lot further down the road in building the job the moment we win it.”

Gaining from the User’s Conference

In 19 years as a McCormick customer, Loney has personally attended 13 of our User’s Conferences. Does that seem like a lot of time out of the office for a small electrical contractor? Loney claimed that it’s paid off for BCL Electric.

“I like talking with the McCormick people, and I always learn something we can make use of here when I get back from one of the User’s Conferences,” he reported. “I also really enjoy the networking with the other contractors who attend."

“Over the years, I’ve talked to contractors at the conference who had national accounts with a couple of big customers. These contractors needed someone in northern Idaho. We’ve picked up a few nice jobs as a result that we would never have known were out there otherwise.”

These days, with Moscow being a part of the U.S. economy, BCL is looking outside the immediate area for additional work. “Yes, we’re bidding more jobs these days,” Loney admitted. “The great thing about working with the McCormick system is that we know, for sure that, at the very least, our bids are consistent.”

What that means to this contractor: “It means we can bid these jobs with confidence. If we win the bid, we know that we can perform on that job at that price.”

What’s Coming In Version 9.2

 Visitors to the McCormick Systems booth at the NECA or IEC shows will see an updated edition of our software, V9.2, with enhancements and updates that customers (contractors and estimators just like you) have requested.

Here’s a run-down of what’s in there.

Jobs Area, tabs – previously, your options were limited here; you could have two tabs, “active” and “inactive” jobs. Now, you can have up to 20. Example: You can have tabs with headings by the estimators in your department (tabs named Tom, Dick, Jerry, Harry, and Maria). Or you could have tabs that break down your past jobs by year (2009, 2008, 2007, etc.). OR: If your company has several offices (Brooklyn, the Bronx, Bayonne, and Camden), or even job type (residential, commercial, hopitals, bids won, bids lost, etc.)

            What you get, net: More flexibility.

Jobs Details, Bid information – previously, your software came with the amount of information you could place here specifically defined (job name, job number, bid date, chief estimator). as well as a section for customized input, Now, you can link up Bid Summary information . Up to 20 items (specified by you) will show up there, as you like it . . . square footage of jobs ,sell price, profit included in bids submitted, linked to bid summary.

            What you get, net: Ability to customize another part of the program.

New reports – you now have more standard reports available. What you get here: More information, standard in the program, ready for you to use (or ignore, as you choose).

Trade Service interfaces – this vendor came out with a new format for price updating with its SX offering. V9.2 is adapted to fit hand-in-glove with the new Trade Service format. Previously, you were locked into specific fields; now, you can pull information from any of the TS pricing fields.

Additionally, with 9.2 – assuming you subscribe to both Trade Service and NECA’s Manual of Labor Units – you can update your database with NECA’s Labor Units.

Also new on the Trade Service front in V9.2: Unattended price updates are now available. Previously, someone had to monitor the updates (sit in front of the computer and interact with the updates). Now, you can tell the McCormick system to run your price updates at 11 p.m. Go home! Come in and check it out – you’ll have the reports the next morning.

Supplier Exchange – Trade Service’s Supplier Exchange is another new service from the vendor. You can now use this with McCormick software to evaluate prices from multiple suppliers and, if you like, “cherry pick” the prices you like from each supplier.

            What you get, net: V9.2 offers you the ability to really put the new offerings from Trade Service to work for your company.

Also of note: TOUCH SCREEN. Our friends at OnScreen Take-Off are now offer the ability to use their program – for which McCormick is a value-added reseller – with touch-screen monitors. McCormick will accommodate this. In fact, visitors to our booth at either show will see a couple of touch-screen monitors for you to try out.

Touch Screen Takeoff

See Us At NECA & IEC

NECA Show – we’re in booth #405 in Seattle, on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, Sept. 13-15. In your planning, don’t overlook our pre-conference Standard training class in Seattle, Sept. 9-10-11 (call 800-444-4890 NOW for more information).

IEC Electric Expo – we’re in booth #111 in St. Louis, on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 22-23. Don’t miss our Paul Wheaton, presenting “What You Should Expect From An Estimating System,” a 90-minute presentation starting at 8:30 Saturday Oct. 24. Then after a short break catch his presentation on Taking Off Digital Drawings at 10:30am.

2010 User's Conference -
Mark Your Calendar!

We've chosen the Tempe Mission Palms (Tempe, AZ) for our User's Conference -- to be held March 17-20, 2010. Early bird registrations qualify for a discount; the deadline is Jan 4, 2010.
Download the single-page registration form.

Solar's Future & Workforce Needs

Coverage at PV-tech.org of the recent Intersolar North America event (held a few weeks ago) included a lengthy piece on the increased need for workers that solar photovoltaics is going to need if it is to continue to grow at a high rate.

Here's the piece on field installer needs:

On the integrator front, Swanson recounted SunPower’s accelerated ability to deploy systems at a clip well up the GW-scale—or at least mondo-megawatt-scale—learning curve. He said the company’s team in Spain installed about 180 MW of utility-scale PV there last year, proving their ability to install 1-2MW/day in the field. Much of that improved velocity has to do with the company’s development of factory-manufactured, integrated systems optimized for rapid deployment.

If we run those numbers on a per-annum basis, one team of a few hundred trained installers has the chops to put up more than 700MW of ground-mounted PV in a year (realistically, the numbers wouldn't add up the same for rooftop installations). Multiply that out to at least several teams per firm and then to scores of enterprises, and the notion of dozens if not hundreds of gigawatts of PV getting installed worldwide on an annual basis becomes credible—with the usual caveats of financing, smart and enhanced production, proper policy, solid training, and the like.

A straight extrapolation to 500GW per annum would mean a workforce increase into the millions, in just 20 years. Although the recruitment and training implications of such explosive growth boggle the noggin, Swanson factors in a sizeable discounting in his estimates, seeing more like a million or so employed in the solar sector—a not-insubstantial global headcount.

Electrical Construction & The Smart Grid

Michael Johnston, a NECA staff member, will chair a task group (formed by NFPA, according to the release, at the request of NIST) on electrical construction and the Smart Grid. You might want to click over and read the release, it's lengthy and contains info that may turn out to be important on down the line. NIST = National Institute of Standards & Technology, a federal organization.

Here's a slice:

“The Obama administration has made the smart grid a high priority, and we have the technology to make it a reality,” Johnston said. “But the technology requires a new level of coordination between systems on both the customer and utility ends of the service point.”

Functionally, “service point” refers to “the junction where a utility’s wiring ends and a customer’s wiring begins,” Johnston said. In a smart grid, not only will a customer’s power usage be recorded, but that information will be communicated back to the power generation and transmission facilities in real time. This data will then allow the utility to “shed load” when demand for power is low and step it up when demand increases.

“It’s a true demand response system,” Johnston said. “The good news is that the highway is already built – meaning we have a linked system of power generation, transmission, and distribution. With the smart grid, we’re going to be adding instrumentation such as sensors, relays and other technologies to communicate what’s going on and automatically modify what’s going out based on that information.”