Field Notes

Recovering from the holidays is a drag!  First, you use up all your vacation, then, you come back to reality and realize there are five-day workweeks staring you square on until May. And, no matter the job, there are always those tasks that make it seem as if time stops. Anybody have the least favorite part of their jobs they do, because it has to be done, but it’s mentally wearing or takes an inordinate amount of time?

My list has two things on it: fab tickets and doors/door hardware.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re necessary, but for me are mentally exhausting.

Fab tickets are tough, because up until that point, shop drawings, estimates and material takeoffs are all theoretical.  But since the saw’s going to start hitting metal as a result of what is drawn on fab tickets, the information on them is no longer theory; it’s as real-world as it can get.  They have to be right; there’s no longer any room for error.  And even if there’s one hole more or less on this part vs. the next part, another part drawing has to be created.  Doing fab tickets wears me out, but it’s how things get done. If programs like Revit and/or Inventor have their way, maybe fab tickets will go away.  Maybe not before I retire, but soon enough.

The cellar-dweller for me has always been doors and door hardware.  First, I have yet to see a hardware specification that is 100-percent accurate when it comes to the hardware fitting either in the door, or with the other hardware specified.  Sure as the sun comes up in the east, something doesn’t belong with the rest of the group.  And, there’s usually not enough time in estimating to ferret all those conflicts out.  So, typically, the spec hardware gets priced, and any conflicts aren’t resolved until …

Someone starts pulling hardware cut sheets and tries to do shop drawings for the doors. Then the questions and issues pile up: where is everything located, up/down, left or right? Or, this panic can’t work with that push/pull, the lock interferes with the throw-rods of the panic, or that lock is meant for a wide stile door rail, not a narrow one, that pull won’t work with that door thickness, or there’s a custom connection device, etc.

Not to mention swing definitions.  Can I vent here a minute about what I thought the door industry definition was for many years? I was initially trained that if you put your back on the hinge jamb of the door, if the door swung away to your right, it was a right-handed door, and vice-versa for left-hand doors. Come to find out, that was an over-simplification.  Do you know what the door and door hardware industry uses for naming the swing? It’s confusing as all get-out to me. What does the in-swing or out-swing have to do with it?  OK, off the soapbox.

And once approved, and the fabrication can begin, other conflicts may then come to light, and the process of finding out what it’s going to take to make it work is researched, and then getting approval to make the change starts all over.  Some days, when you’re in the middle of all this, you pray for the world to end, and you think you’re never going to do anything ever again. It’s downright vicious!

The way around all this rigmarole is multi-faceted. If you have a really good hardware supplier, he gets the biggest Christmas present, birthday present, anniversary present, etc.  If you have season tickets to sporting events (yes, that means you, Lyle), he gets multiple dates without question.  I’d go so far as putting him on retainer, but that’s above my pay grade.  He’s definitely worth it if he can assist your firm in staying out of the hardware quagmire.  Try doing without this resource sometime.  See how far that gets you.

The second solution is having someone on the shop floor who is only next to God and the hardware supplier when it comes to their encyclopedic knowledge of hardware.  The hardware supplier might be worth his weight in gold, but the mechanic is worth it in platinum. At my first job, we had a guy that all he did in the shop was doors and door hardware. You could ask him anything – the most experienced drafters and project managers–and even the boss–sought his opinion. He would have been the last let go had there been a reduction in force; he was that good.

Third, admit you don’t know it all and listen to anybody that’s been there. But, get smart really fast, because when that submittal’s made, you’re likely going to need to be the smartest person in the room. You better have it down so cold you can anticipate any question from anyone in the room, and have the answer down pat! Saying, “I don’t know” can be humbling, and it’s sometimes better to admit that than fake your way through, but if you say it here, you shoot your credibility.

And fortitude. Stick to it. One day, you’ll walk through those doors, and wonder of wonders, they’ll work.  My hat’s off to the guys who do this in the shop! God bless you, some of the rest of us would still be using burlap blankets to keep the wind and rain out.  We may not ever be able to repay you, but we’ll certainly always owe you one. And to Servin, thanks. You gave me a heck of an education, man.

P.S.With MLK day coming up next week, I highly recommend one of his last sermons, “The Drum Major Instinct.”  It moves me because it’s about remembering who you are, where your priorities should be, and how easy it is to get caught up in things that in the end aren’t very important.  In certain aspects, MLK was certainly someone who could have been considered a drum major, but probably knew from firsthand experience how hard that is to deal with on a personal basis.  My wife makes me read it regularly; I wonder why that is.

A lot’s gone on the past month outside the glass industry.

First, 12/12/12 came and went, and the world didn’t end on 12/21/12. All these date sequences–are they gone until 1/2/03, 90 years from now? Or, will people be as interested in 12/24/36, or are there other variations that have stuck in your mind? The Pythagorean Theorem is one number set that’s stuck with me (where a triangle with sides a = 3 and b = 4 has side c = 5).

Other spatial relationships, such as those found in architecture going back to the Egyptians, have always fascinated me. Many European cities, such as Athens and Rome, are laid out with patterns not easily discernible when walking their streets, but are noticeable when viewed in plan. Some of that was brought forward to some U.S. cities, most notably with L’Enfant’s design for Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Likewise, Frank Lloyd Wright’s early work was based on simplified but spatially organized grid systems that have always intrigued me.

And, some of this thinking gets applied to modern curtainwall designs. The earliest curtainwalls were simple, repeating grids. The more complex examples, such as Gehry’s IAC Building in NYC, are challenging to the detailer, but how’d the architects think them up in the first place?

I have a lot of respect for whoever can think this far out of the box. Gehry was in Permasteelisa’s plant watching glass being set on typical unitized wall panels. Seeing the glass deflect under its own weight when picked up by suction cups, he used that natural glass “bow” to come up with the unitized concept for the IAC project. The curtainwall units are bowed and warped, not just flat and/or segmented.

In another complex curtainwall project – New York’s 100 11th Avenue building – no two adjacent lites are in the same plane, and are canted at different angles, both horizontally and vertically within their respective frames. It makes for an interesting reflection, but also gives me a headache to even begin to envision the detailing that would have required (not to mention how many gallons (not tubes) of sealant it took to waterproof this system). How did they frame it–with extrusions or with brake metal? I’m completely stumped and equally impressed.

Some notable events within the glazing industry have also occurred recently.

Guardian announced they now have a minority partner (Koch Industries with 44 percent of the stock) and a new president.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is slapping tariffs on Chinese unitized curtainwall imports. Meanwhile, the Canadian government decided not to take similar action, initially finding no cause for doing so. I’ve stated here before: if you can produce it cheaper than we can, and produce the same quality, no issues. But, it’s an unfair competitive advantage domestic suppliers don’t get if our governments don’t subsidize our products, while foreign governments subsidize their manufacturers.

Finally, right before Christmas, the memorials for the Newtown school shooting victims had me wanting to rant about everything that tragedy means, how it could be fixed and who should do what about it. But, given the time of year, the thought crossed my mind: Why not wish for “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men” the whole year long, not just in the latter part of December? There’s a New Year’s resolution in there somewhere, I think.

Hope your holidays were spent with family. I went sledding yesterday (for the first time in I don’t know how long) with the grandkids. No pictures of that are available, certainly not for publication. But it was fun, and I’m not in the same shape I was in years’ past …

Best in the coming year to you and yours.

Last week, while completing an estimate on a fairly large curtainwall project, I was reminded of an experience that has stuck with me for more than 25 years, regarding the importance of ethics in business.  My employer at the time had a project with a granite-clad steel truss with punched opening windows.  These were only two of the thirty-one glazing systems involved in the project, but they covered floors seven through 40 on a 50-story high-rise office building.

Shortly before Thanksgiving that year, we needed to place a one million pound order for hot rolled steel tubes.  We had recently completed the mock-up, and it was time to gear up for the job order.  The steel obviously was going to be one of the major purchase orders (with more than a week spent doing the take-off).  When the sizes and quantities were finally ready, we called six or seven of the more reputable vendors we typically dealt with to get quotes.

Never having officially been a salesperson, I don’t know what it’s like to earn a living strictly off commissions, but I have to believe when someone calls with a million-pound order for ANY commodity, they’d have my attention.  That was the case, here, too:  several expressions dealing with the religious nature of feces were heard when we told them how much steel we were planning to buy.  One vendor’s comment has stuck with me:  “This could make for a VERY Merry Christmas.”  I can imagine!

Steel prices were about $0.35/lb at the time, as I recall, so the total order was around $350,000.  So, we put some ground rules together.  One, we were only going to go out for bid one time, we weren’t going to shop the number, using someone else’s quote to get a different vendor to lower their quote, and we needed pricing back as soon as we could get it.  We were going to immediately evaluate the bids and issue a purchase order within two to three days after receiving quotes.  We issued a deadline and we gave them sequencing instructions (we couldn’t take it all at once, etc.).

As it turned out, I don’t think there was a nickel’s difference in the price per pound between the high and low quote.  The cost was extended out to four decimal places ––no more than $50,000 separating low and high.  We knew by way of the quotes several of the vendors had gone to the same mills, so the only difference was either their overhead and/or profit.

So, obviously, someone did have a very Merry Christmas, and everybody else was left with Christmas stockings filled by someone else, or not at all.  What made this experience more memorable, and the reason it’s stuck with me all these years was what happened once we let all the high vendors know they weren’t getting the order.

One of the higher priced vendors called back immediately and said he’d do whatever was needed to get the order.  I apologized, and said I couldn’t do that.  He asked “why not?” After telling all the vendors we were not shopping prices, that we were going to move immediately, and then letting everyone else know (including the low vendor, too) how we were going, he expected us to change course.  Not going to happen. I told him if I did that, any credibility the company had would be shot to Hades, and no one would ever believe us again on any orders of any size.

He didn’t care, he was prepared to do whatever it took to get the order. Regardless what lines needed to be crossed, he’d move heaven and earth to get the order. I told him if I let him re-price his quote, all of the high bidders should be given the same chance. Of course, he wasn’t in favor of that.  Obviously, had the budget been blown (it hadn’t), we would have put it back out for pricing. Not to mention what the low guy would have thought if we started shopping the numbers again.

Typically, estimates are basically converted to the project budget when the job is sold.  Sometimes, actual pricing comes in lower than what was carried in the estimate.  Sometimes it’s not, and you have to scramble, figure out how to get it back down within budget.  And vendors can help only so much.

I could not get the guy off our backs about this.  When I told him he was nearer the high side than the low side, he wanted to know by how much.  That wasn’t going to happen, either.   The vendors by going to basically the same mill all knew what each other was paying for raw material, but it would not have been copacetic to give out what their prices were to their competitors.

What we’re talking about here is how honestly we all deal with each other in the business world.  I was in a meeting with my boss at the time and a GC when the question of my boss’ honesty was put on the table by the GC. The GC didn’t like the price and thought my boss was being overly aggressive in the estimate for change orders.  My boss’s response was classic:  “I’m reasonably honest, but I’m no more honest than you are.”

GCs sometimes may play this game, using one subcontractor’s price to get the sub he prefers into a job at a lower number, but it’s not ethical.  More times than not, there’s a good reason your price is not as low as someone else’s.  What did you get in your price that they might have missed?  Is your overhead the same as theirs?  Taking a job at someone else’s number is a risky proposition at best.

And it’s not any more ethical to shop prices among subs than at any other level in the game than another.  In some respects, it’s almost like price-fixing on the part of the entity that stands to benefit the most from a lower price, rather than the suppliers (glazing subs or material suppliers) on the other side being in collusion in rigging the pricing to a certain level.  Maybe it’s the “golden” rule:  since the GC (or owner or whoever’s paying the bill) has the gold, they make the rules.

As to the vendor wanting to get another shot at revising his quote:  it didn’t happen.  When he hung up with me, he called that same boss.  And when I walked my boss through it, he backed me up.  The vendor was called and told he wasn’t getting the chance to change his quote.

I don’t know who first said it, but honesty is really the best policy, in dealing with both suppliers and customers.   While no one is thrilled to loose a job to a lower number, it beats getting a job with a really stupid number any day.  I’m not so naïve to think that there aren’t snakes in the grass; the snakes eventually reveal themselves for what they are, and my memory chip still works pretty good remembering who they are.

I trust you and yours had a happy Thanksgiving.