Field Notes

I forgot something I wanted to do a couple of weeks ago since I heard Greg Carney’s out on his own.  Too, too many years ago, I met Greg when he was a local sales rep for LOF straight out of Southern Miss, if I’m not mistaken.  We were BOTH pretty wet behind the ears. If he won’t tell any tales on me, I won’t on him. We have stayed somewhat in touch during his sojourns at, let’s see if I can get them all, LOF, Spectrum, Interpane and as technical director for GANA. I wanted to thank him for everything he’s accomplished at GANA. For that effort, the entire industry should be grateful. It’s a better industry because of his contribution.  Greg, good luck in your future endeavors. AND thank God, we’re glad to have you still around, too!!!

Now onto to the latest blog posting…

Lyle Hill, president of MTH Industries, wrote a piece called “Incurable … Irrefutable … Immutable: The Laws of Contract Glazing.”  It’s funny, it’s straight to the heart of the matter, and makes you wonder why so many people stay in the biz… 

Below is my take on where Murphy comes into play with curtain wall. I’ve tried to make this funny, or I started off that way. Please don’t take it any other way except as a poor attempt to laugh at some of the situations we in the glazing industry find ourselves in way too often. Some of it is and isn’t our own fault. It just seems to be the nature of the beast we call curtain wall.  Here goes: 

1. Color of the curtain wall or windows is strictly the prerogative of the architect, and you are going to guess wrong in predicting whether or not any two paint samples, chips or coupons are a match. Or not. Any two people will see colors, or shades, or tints differently. Don’t ever assume that because YOU think it’s a match anybody else, including the architects, will agree with you. I offer as evidence any time you’ve had a discussion about what color to paint a room in your house. How’d that go with your significant other? Sending material to be finished before the approval of the color is returned is doubling the amount that will be paid for finishing a given project.  
2. Aesthetic issues will always be addressed by the architect, and it’s impossible to predict how the issue will be decided. RFI’s are great for submitting questions about how a detail should look but, like paint, predicting the approval of the RFI detail is a risky proposition. I’ll bet $1 to a donut the detail will not be approved. You can show it as an option, but it’s highly likely what’s returned is something different. And there’s not enough money in the estimate to do it the way the architect has responded.    
3. Tolerances are never accounted for properly, and won’t be addressed until a problem occurs on site. At the latest, they are a point of discussion prior to the pre-construction meeting. And that’s usually held after the material has been built or shipped to the site. Making them a point of emphasis in shop drawing submittals makes more sense. Included in this discussion should be:
   a. Concrete forming tolerances,
   b. Steel erection tolerances,
   c. Precast pouring and erection tolerances,
   d. Other surrounding substrate tolerances, such as stud framing, brick/stone masonry openings, and
   e. The fabrication and erection tolerances of the windows or curtain walls that go in last.
   And when they are off, the contractor responsible for creating the condition has already left the job. A leading curtain wall subcontractor makes a great case for getting on site as soon as possible, and getting off even quicker:  If they get their material built and installed, everybody has to work to them, instead of them having to deal with everybody else’s mistakes. On one project, I observed this glazing sub installing windows in stud walls before sheathing and stucco were put on the studs. The second the studs were up, they were installing the windows. As soon as the shoring was out of the way, they were in doing layout and erecting curtain wall. What a novel approach! 
4. Straight lines on a drawing are never built that way on site. That goes for ALL drawings, be it architect’s, glazier’s shop drawings or manufacturer’s cut sheets.  
   a. Edge of slab can be off from the nominal location and likely will be more than the nominal dimensions specified. If designed for +/-1” in/ out, up/down, left /right, there will be some point more than that. Pick 2” instead of 1”, and it will still be missed.   
   b. Floor slabs, lintel beams and precast panels sag between columns or supports, some more, some less than others, and seldom to the specified criteria or dimensions predicted by the structural engineer.    
   c. Floors don’t align in plane for the full height of the building.
   d. Curbs are never consistently the right height, nor are they ever flat.
5. Bid exceptions never make it past the GC to the architect or owner. It doesn’t matter whether the exceptions are to the specifications or architectural details. Shop drawing reviews will bring this issue to a head. The shops are prepared based on how the project was bid and how you planned to do the work, as explained in your bid qualifications to the GC. All of that’s forgotten the second the architect has the drawings. Too many times, the architects don’t know anything about your exceptions, and they won’t recognize them. Now what do you do? And do you really think you’re going to get the money to do it the way the architect wanted it originally? Which is why you took the bid exception in the first place, right, to cut costs out of the job? This has got to be where the term “vicious circle” and “dog chasing its own tail” originated. 
6. Schedules:  I saw a cartoon a couple of years ago, I think was called, “The State of Art.” It was about a guy working on a drafting board. The caption over his head, with a Merry Christmas banner in the background:  “All I want for Christmas is a project whose schedule is in touch with reality.” I think that says it all.  Murphy’s Law: there will always be one entity in the chain that despite the best laid plans, will deliver their work at the very last possible minute if not late already, causing everyone else downstream to scramble. No matter how late the work commenced, the end date ain’t moving. It doesn’t matter what happens in between, whether the issue is in your control or not, the end date is inflexible, immoveable, irrefutably your fault if it does move. 
7. When bidding, no matter how many bids are within 5 to 10 percent of each other (meaning everybody saw things pretty much the same way, and the bids are pretty much apples-to-apples), there is always one bidder that is 25 to 30 percent (or more) under everybody else. The corollary to this is it’s usually the company with the least experience or the worst by reputation with the abnormally low bid.To add fat to the fire, the GC will award the contract to that REALLY low bidder, and sell it to the owner for the next lowest bid. The GC will then call when either the schedule’s run away from the sub or when the owner/architect won’t accept the work. The GC’s light finally comes on, and learns he didn’t have an apples-to-apples bid when he assigned the work to this sub.And irony of ironies, the GC pleads for help, and forgets all about the money they pocketed when the work was sold to the owner and will beg you to do it for next to nothing, with those dreaded words: “If you will help us out on this, we will make it up to you on the next project.”

   And last, but certainly not least, we will ultimately see the same situation repeating itself on that next project. But not to worry:  the added cost to “make up for it” will put you 25 to 30 percent higher than the competition, and you won’t even get a call to discuss the bid with the GC. Is that a happy ending or what? 

Only 7? There’s got to be others. But I’m brain dead at the moment, and can’t think of any others. Care to share?

It started with mechanical drafting in 7^th grade. As Collingdale High School was a combined Jr-Sr high school, seeing the seniors working on house plans suckered me in. My parents bought me a drafting set that Christmas. I wanted nothing else. That’s what I thought architecture was. I learned differently in college, and fell into curtainwall by accident. 

What was important was the foundation I received about what good drafting is. Mr. Hummel and Mr. Ershaw were great teachers. They taught me the fundamentals:  Correctly laying out the objects, dimensioning them and annotating them for whoever would be using them later –builder, estimator or owner. Creating closed object lines – no openings. Learning to letter cleanly, and being succinct with notes to drawings. All by hand, none of this “click the fillet button, then the dimension icon, then indicate/click the mouse where it needed to be located.”   

And the drafting foundation carried through after I got out of college and landed my first professional job as a draftsman with a curtainwall subcontractor that did their own design, fabrication and installation. Please don’t tell my wife, but for the first two years in the business, I had personal, intimate relationships (always professional, none of this Tiger Woods business for me) with drafting tools: a parallel bar, triangles (30/60, 45 and adjustable), 2H and 4H lead, drafting powder and brush, a scale, lead holders and pointers, an electric eraser and drafting tape.  And, a calculator to determine what the dimensions really ought to be. Those penciled lines never did have any smart data attached to them, and you couldn’t click on them to put a dimension on a drawing. 

I developed calluses on my fingers using a lead holder for so long. Not to mention sepias and bluelines. You cannot call yourself a draftsperson until you’ve stood in front of an ammonia powered blueline machine or had to erase the back of a sepia drawing without tearing through the paper, and then go home smelling like that and try to kiss your significant other. And I don’t ever want to go back there ever again. 

One of the most important lessons I learned was from my first boss, Charlie Morgan. He taught me something I have not forgotten to this day:  That I needed to learn what someone else was trying to teach about how to draw. I had been in the business for all of three months, while he had been doing it for 25 years by that point. I still had some things to learn, and he was interested in teaching me, if I was willing to listen. His question came through loud and clear, although he didn’t put it directly to me. Was I willing to learn? I hope Charlie would say I answered that bell.     

By definition, shop drawings are used to communicate how the manufacturer will fabricate the material. And, there’s a whole different side to the drawings than just that:  Many other parties will rely on them. Architects will use them to check for compliance with their design intent. Their consultant, when there is one, will check for technical suitability. Purchasing will use them for quantity takeoffs and buying the material. The fabrication department will use them to draw the actual production tickets for the parts for use on the shop floor. Production/manufacturing will review them for reference to assist in figuring out just what exactly it is they are supposed to be machining. General contractors will use them for coordinating the work between the adjacent trades. And, last but not least, the installer will use them to correctly install the work. 

And we’ve missed some of that coming out of the dark ages, drawing on a board and moving to the electronics of computer-aided drafting. Saying someone is a draftsperson because they know AutoCAD (or equal) is like saying someone is an accountant because they know Excel. Knowledge of the software alone does not make one proficient in the application.

We’ve forgotten we need to teach drafting. I hope there are drafting courses still out there. The layout, the placements of notes and dimensions and the ability to communicate to all of those parties are what the drawing is all about. My former boss Charlie probably still prefers to this day to draft on a board. He’s an artist when it comes to communicating through paper and pencil. And you can do it in AutoCAD or any other computer drafting system if you have first learned how to communicate what you know through the medium, be it pencil and paper on a board, or a mouse, tablet and computer screen. After all is said and done, they’re just tools. 

And now the revolution of moving from board to computer screen is taking the next leap – BIM or whatever that may morph into. Having lived through the first revolution, hold on, this is going to be fun! The BIM world will take us to a completely new level. There will be old guys who won’t want to move away from what they have done in the past, and there will always be some young upstart who thinks he can do it better.

To the old guys:  Pass on what you know. Just remember those guys who taught it to you will haunt you unless you pass it on. To the younger set, find an old guy and see what he can teach you. You might be surprised. Just keep an open mind. 

When I was in 7^th grade, drafting on a computer wasn’t even close to being a reality. I never knew I’d be using a computer to draw, and I would NOT go back to a board for all the money in the world. See, us old folks can still learn some things … I learned that when I was still young, so we will listen when the next wave comes, be it BIM, or whatever takes its place. Some things we don’t forget too easily. And say thanks to all the Charlie Morgans of the world. They are the foundation on which all of us have built.

One final thought:  Merry Christmas! Hopefully your holidays will be filled with family, friends, great memories, peace and joy. And remember the people out there making sure we can enjoy it – those who are sacrificing their time away from their loved ones. In our home this year, for the first time in two generations, it’s Go Navy!!! Remember the reason for the season!

Just a quick word to our friends at Arch: none of us like to have our laundry hung in public. But we’ve all been there. Hang in there, the cream rises to the top. At least from this limited perspective, the old adage of “When the going gets tough…” applies. Hopefully we’ll soon see a tougher Arch, then watch out!

Thus, on to more mundane matters. When an earthquake occurs at sea, one of the things scientists are getting better at predicting is the resultant tsunami that may occur. Until the tsunami reaches the shore, it is virtually invisible. But when it arrives, there’s no doubt that it’s real, and it becomes devastating. Same with an earthquake on land – we don’t know it’s coming until it hits, and when it does, hold on for dear life.

One tsunami that’s coming is the NFRC certification program that’s about to roll out and be required in a limited number of states come 1 January 2010. It’s out there, it’s virtually invisible to most of us in the industry, but when it hits shore on New Year’s Day, the implications are really scary.

One, as an employee of a frame manufacturer, we have products we want to include in the NFRC database so our customers can get NFRC certifications on their projects. So making the people at NFRC mad at me has some implications.

Second, as I said when I wrote a letter to the editors of the glass mags back in July, I think a rating system to verify/certify the actual thermal performance of site-built curtainwalls is a good thing. With energy concerns becoming a larger issue, why not provide products to assure that?

So what’s the dilemma with NFRC? There are too many open issues, and the wave is about to come ashore. For example:

1. Curtainwall U-values are based on an 80” x 80” test window, which is somewhat arbitrary. And, currently, there are no provisions for testing the actual window sizes of any given project. The resulting U-values from the test window may or may not be higher or lower than that of an actual wall when installed onsite. For example, the ratio of glass to frame, when the glass is significantly larger, improves the U-value. If a window doesn’t test out at the 80” x 80” requirement, the certification cannot be obtained, but an actual window as built onsite could model out to be better than the tested window.

2. Ambiguities exist as to who the role players are: 

    a. Who is the “Responsible Party” for obtaining the certifications? The Architect? The GC? Or the glazing sub? This has to be defined probably in the contract documentation of a given project. If the glazing sub is designated in the specs as the responsible party, better know what that means. As the certification is going to be required by code, the “responsible party” is not going to be able to duck this by qualifying the bid.

    b. “Specifying Authority:” This as yet undefined entity would be responsible for taking on the task of making sure the NFRC procedures have been followed and hiring independent validating entities, either test labs or 3^rd parties, to verify the work of the “responsible party.”

3. It’s my understanding that none of the glass spacer people have agreed to be part of this process, and have not to date gotten their products “certified” within the NFRC database. This begs the question as to whether or not they are purposely holding back, and I don’t care to speculate if they are. But if the Computer Modeling Approach (referred to as CMA by NFRC) requires the spacer as one of three components (glass and frame are the other two) to be included in the process to obtain certification, yet isn’t in the equation, how does the “responsible party” obtain certification if the manufacturers aren’t going to participate? That’s like trying to buy a car without an engine. 

4. Spandrel issues have yet to be addressed in the curtainwall. Currently, there is no way to include:

    a. Insulation in the rating/certification program. Does anyone not believe insulation in the curtainwall application positively impacts the thermal performance of the wall?

    b. Spandrel materials other than glass, such as metal panels or stone. So how do you separate out a frame that holds glass and spandrel materials and just model only the glass portion, and how does that verify the thermal performance of the actual wall system being built onsite?

5. NFRC just announced their election results. And, to date, no one from the curtainwall industry has been able to make inroads to serve on the board. Traco and Guardian don’t count in my book. NFRC was established in response to the residential window market, and they’ve done a great job of bringing a standard set of rules for thermal performance to that industry. But applying that model to the commercial window industry doesn’t work for the real world. We don’t build the same thing over and over again; each project is new, unique and not likely to be repeated ever again. 

Questions to NFRC come back with answers like, “that’s a known problem and our best people are working on it.” I went to the fall GANA Conference in KC to specifically ask the NFRC representative, who was a guest speaker, and have gotten no additional clarification. When asked about item 1 above, I basically got the answer of, “yes, we know that.” That was the extent of the answer. I gave up asking any more questions after that.

I don’t know what shape or context this wave will take after January 1. The problem is, it’s not clear where the high ground is to run to. Excluding the certification from the bid appears to be the only recourse, but if that doesn’t get back through the General Contractor to the owner and architect, there’s going to be some subcontractors that are going to have a bad experience bringing this system on line.

I hope to high heaven I’m wrong. Totally, unequivocally, absolutely proven to be dead wrong on this. Only time will tell. There’s been enough discussion within the industry about this coming, so there are no excuses for any of us. Hang on, the next few months as this comes on line are going to be, in the words of Artie Johnson, “vedy intresting.”

It has recently been pressed upon me that I’m now, officially, old. For the first time professionally, I’m now the old man of the office. There’s only one other guy in the office older than me, and he owns the place. He can retire; I can join AARP. I don’t know how getting this old happened. 

But, I’m not as old as dirt, contrary to what my kids or some of the guys in Engineering will tell you. I was NOT there when the first caveman cut a wheel from stone. To put my age in a curtainwall perspective, I’m as old as urethane sealants, but not as old as polysulfide. (If you have to ask what either of these are, you’re still young.) Your office old guy can tell you what they are – see, we do have SOME value. 

When I got into this business, everything we used to seal curtainwalls was two-part urethane sealant. Then, the first structural silicone glazing job we did came along, and we had to put a slide-in, alodine-finished, aluminum extrusion in the mullion design because the silicone sealant manufacturers were not yet comfortable with allowing silicone adhesion to Kynar-based paints. Some time after that, in the mid-80s, that obviously changed – and in short order, too.

But one thing hasn’t changed in all these years:  Sealants are such a small part of any job, but they play as critical a role as any other single component in an effective installation. If you don’t believe me, surely somewhere in your experience there’s been a missed or improperly installed seal that later became a leaker. If it was just one, you were lucky. Missed a whole bunch, and you just shot the profitability of that job, if not for the whole year. I know some (a LOT) of people to refer you to with firsthand experience, if you need any on this one.  

Nothing made that clearer to me recently than in reviewing the Glass Association of North America’s latest re-write of the Sealant Manual. And, after having been in the consulting end of things, nothing seems to get less attention paid to it. It’s too important an element of what we do to shortcut in any form. 

And then came along structural sealant. If you want to scare your friends, tell them there’s a tall tower in your town using only silicone to hold the glass to the building, nothing else. I got a dollar that says they come back with, “What, the stuff I buy at the local hardware store to seal up my tub and shower at home?” And then tell them yes, and watch the look on their faces. Ok, it’s not that simple, but it’s good for a laugh or two at the next holiday party. 

Aluminum, glass and panels usually don’t leak, but the joints between them do. Sometimes you use sealant to plug those gaps. It’s usually one of the first and last lines of defense to air and water penetration. I got a dollar that says you better understand completely how the sealant you use will work. Or, face the loss of revenue that my dollar won’t begin to cover. Some examples: 

• I saw a unitized curtainwall assembler tooling wet sealant with soap and water about three years ago, something they had been doing for more than 20 years because “they had always done it that way and the company WE both used to work for had done it that way.” Even though the specifications clearly prohibited that practice, he thought it was ok. It had been prohibited for about 15 years, and had ceased at our prior company because the sealant manufacturers had come out and said that soap on the substrates would compromise adhesion. 
• Installations are often erected and put into the opening with perimeter seal joints smaller than the dimensions shown on the shop drawings. Just because a window can fit inside the opening doesn’t mean that everything’s ok. Tolerance for both the opening and for the window can contribute to that smaller joint, but such a joint is a leak waiting to happen. The sealant will most likely be overworked. The joints shown on the details are MINIMUMS, and smaller joints should NOT be allowed to occur. Please point this out to your installers!!!
• I know of a manufacturer (not in the U.S., but from a country that Max Perilstein knows and loves) that shipped a unitized, factory-glazed, structural silicone project without any sealant manufacturer testing, drawing review or approved quality control procedure. When asked for the sealant company warranty, one was not forthcoming because none of this REQUIRED, BASIC legwork had been done prior to manufacturing. The curtainwall manufacturer then had to find a warehouse at or near the jobsite to completely deglaze and reapply the silicone AFTER the testing had been SATISFACTORILY completed. Bet they lost their shirt on that job. Wonder how much repeat work THAT got them?   

 So, boiling this all down, here are one well-aged glass guy’s thoughts on what to keep in mind when sizing a joint:

1. What are the sealant’s capacities for handling movement? For curing? For staining? For adhesion, will primer be required? What special cleaning/prep work has to be done to the substrate before sealant is applied?

2. What are the amounts of building or wall movement that will impact the joint?

   a. From seismic? Is the window opening going to be racked?

   b.From thermal – both of the window or curtainwall, as well as the surrounding substrate?

   c. From building frame movement – most notably structural deflection of floor beams or surrounding materials? Long-term or shot-term creep?

   d. From the wall deflection of framing members? A ½” joint won’t work if the jamb mullion’s going to deflect ¾” with a sealant that has 50% movement capacity. 

 3. And, what are the tolerances of:

   a. The opening in which the window or curtainwall sits?  Masonry and concrete tolerances can dramatically impact sealants. The tolerances of these materials will surprise you, and rival that of structural steel.

   b. Even though windows and curtainwalls have pretty tight tolerances, they still have them, which can impact the sealants if they run to the plus size. 

It’s critical to know all there is to know about sealants. And if you don’t, the sealant manufacturers have expended a lot of effort in setting up technical support staffs, and done an excellent job of training their in-field personnel in offering to assist in planning your sealant use on the next project.

I had an owner tell me in Dubai that one could erect curtainwall without sealant. Yeah, right. Go ahead, try. Tell me the name of the contractor, window or curtainwall manufacturer, glazier or ironworker that’s never used sealant on a project. I’d like to call the owner and see how THAT worked.

A couple of USGNN blogs last week offered different takes on the coming solar panel technology wave. From recent efforts to incorporate photovoltaic (PV) panels into curtainwall projects in the Middle East holding some promise, now’s the time for North America to be looking at this issue even more closely. Thinking (way) back to a solar design/energy efficiency class I had in college, I remember some things I learned then …

First, because curtainwalls are typically vertical, architects can face the building south – or at least the façade with the panels to be glazed into it. The other sides merit few, if any, panels, as the sun isn’t going to do much good on the north face, and the east and west faces see less than a half-day’s worth of sun.  Common sense, right?

Second, shading in the overall building design has to be addressed. If not from surrounding buildings, then shading within the wall components may come into play. A leading manufacturer of solar panels in the Middle East explained it this way:  If there’s any shading whatsoever on the panel, its efficiency falls off dramatically:  A 25 percent shading pattern may drop the efficiency of the panels by 75 percent. Think also about the amount of glass with the PV-electrical generating capacity that might be in the glass bite alone.  On a 5- by 10-inch lite, with a glass bite of ½-inch, 2.5 percent of the square footage of that lite is in the glazing pocket. It’s not a lot, but needs to be considered.

Third, the most efficient PV panels are mounted perpendicular to the sun’s rays. Because that angle changes minute-by-minute as the sun moves across the sky, there are challenges with capturing sufficient energy with fixed panels. And, since the solar incidence angle (the angle at which the sun strikes the panel) varies by latitude, optimum panel placement varies by geography. If the panel doesn’t move to follow the sun, the ideal angle would be 900 to the sun, facing south, at noon on March and September 21/22, the spring/fall equinox. At least twice a year, it’s getting the sun’s rays to hit it exactly right.

For curtainwall applications of PVs, that begs several questions:
1.    What’s the efficiency drop for a panel that’s vertical as opposed to one that’s mounted at an angle? Vertically mounted panels will NEVER reach 100 percent efficiency.
2.    Will architects start designing curtainwalls with angular panels to increase the power the panels can produce?
3.    Or, are panels going to be mounted and devices incorporated to follow the sun across the sky, maximizing their output as compared to their cost?

There are numerous other issues to take into account, such as the role of generating electricity with PVs vis-a-vis saving energy through daylighting, engineering PV curtainwalls to be leak resistant in light of incorporated wiring and pipes, and which specific type of PV technology is best for a given curtainwall application.

The point is, there’s a lot of learning to be done up and down the glazing industry. Hopefully the solar panel manufacturers will start publishing articles in the glazing trade magazines and further educate those who have to install the work and eventually offer the building owners the warranties. Educating the architects is a great first step, but please don’t forget everyone who will buy and install it!

Those of us in the glazing industry are quick studies, if it’s the way the game’s going to be played. We’re hungry for info!

And speaking of games:  Go Phillies (Yanks are up 3-1 as I write this)!!! And Eagles over Cowboys on Sunday. I support two NFL teams: the Eagles and anyone playing the Cowboys.

My son, after getting a degree in accounting, went to work for a paving and excavating contractor. Come to find out the same issues that affect the glass and glazing business are the same in the earth moving business: How accurate are your estimates? How well did you define your scope? Are you doing something for nothing because the field guys don’t know what they should or shouldn’t do? How timely are you paid? And the myriad of other legal, contractual, personnel, resource allocation and technical issues each of us address every day. It doesn’t matter whether it’s glass, metal or dirt; it looks like even the electrical, mechanical and all the other trades have to manage cash flow and control scope. It’s all plan, monitor, implement and change as required to meet schedules and budgets. 

In those daydream moments we all have about things we’d love to do, but can’t without risking being fired, I’ve thought of some favorite things to put on shop drawings or in bid proposals or sneak into a contract now and then:  “Field Note:  Verify dimension in field, cut to length, beat to fit, paint to match.”  Or: “Sorry, we missed that during the estimating, so we will not be providing it.  It’s not in our scope.”

Along with my business card for my day job, I’d also like to hand out a second card for a company I’d like to start: “Others Construction Company.” We don’t have to bid any work, people assign us work all the time. Have you never noted work as “By Others?” That’s my other line of work – send us your drawings, we’ll gladly do it. Fair warning: Don’t think we’ll do it for free just ’cause it was missed in the estimate.  

Finally, can someone please explain why dates for buying or starting the work slip behind in the schedule, but the end date for completing the glazing never moves? So even if you start as soon as a purchase order or contract is signed, you’re already late. And why no one remembers even if or why the start date was postponed in the first place? But by George, the end date ain’t moving! Besides Lyle Hill’s immutable rules of the glass and glazing business, surely there are other “Murphy’s Laws of Glazing” out there. 

I’d love to hear some other suggestions for things you say when no one is listening, or other laws of the construction universe you know about and would love to share, if nothing more than, “Hey if you’re not laughing …” To borrow on a line, “There’s no crying in glazing.” Those people have already quit the business.  But you’re still here.  Hang in there, the cream always comes to the top.