rockstar.esq

We've all heard the adage that "the customer is always right", or "it all pays the same". I'm sure we've all had experiences where diplomacy and patience were rewarded. It's been my experience that a polite, patient, and diplomatic approach is successful in the vast majority of disputes. Giving people room to be mistaken without pushing for apologies or corrections allows them to "save face" which often allows them to appear magnanimous in the end. You never really know what people are going through. There are lots of organizational rules that may require some mental gymnastics to justify an otherwise obvious solution. There are however, times when playing along with a false premise will work against you. One of the most common ones for tradesman is when it comes to change orders. The client hired a General Contractor, who in turn hired a Subcontractor. When the client wants to make a change, they ask the GC to price it up, so the GC asks all the affected subs to price the change. The GC must be prepared to explain/defend the cost of the change order which leads them to scrutinize the pricing they receive from their subs. In most situations, the GC will present themselves to the subs as focusing on their "duty to the client". They will claim to need breakouts, detailed explanations, charts, graphs, pictures, signatures, etc. Sometimes it's valid, oftentimes, it's not. Remember that whatever information you supply, can be used against your interests. It's important to point out that most contracts allow the GC to apply overhead and profit to the sum of all change orders. Now, it might seem like that would create an incentive for the GC to encourage high change order prices from their subs. Here's the thing, not all of the "client changes" are actually due to the client changing their mind. In fact, it's entirely possible that the GC is asking for change order pricing to fix something that they, or the design team screwed up. GC's live in mortal fear of upsetting the delicate ego's of design professionals, because the majority of clients rely on their Architects to provide a shortlist of recommended GC's for the request for proposal. Now I'm not saying that subcontractors should take the short-sighted view that working relationships have no bearing on change order pricing. What I am saying, is that the GC often presents themselves as "defending the client" in situations where the client will never see a bill for anything close to the real cost of what's being done. So at this point the question becomes "how do you tell?". I'll give an example. We had a project with a one year schedule, that was already late 3 months in. The GC was not conducting weekly subcontractor meetings, they didn't provide three week "look ahead" schedules, etc. Simply put, they didn't use any established best-practices to maintain the schedule. They did however, publish a revised project schedule that pushed the end date. Over the course of the first year, they did this nine times. Each time they revised their schedule, we tried to pursue a change order for the additional duration. Their counter-argument was that the scope of work never changed, so we were not entitled to any additional compensation. Efforts to explain basic concepts like overhead, opportunity cost, efficiency, inflation, and general conditions were all met with endless demands for greater transparency. Every revised schedule simply added time to tasks which meant that we were never in a position where we could leave the job, nor could we get an efficient working shift out of our men. Everything about this job was very frustrating because the GC was consistently blocking progress. Now take a moment and look at the bigger picture. We have a job that was supposed to be completed in one year, that over the course of nine schedule revisions, slipped to one year and five months. If you spent a veritable fortune to hire a GC to build your project, wouldn't it be a rather big deal that it was delayed almost half a year? Construction case law is rather clear on these matters. Clients can and do pursue serious penalties for lost revenue when their projects are delayed. This is the number one justification for why GC's demand that subs complete change order work before the paperwork is finalized. Not only are there enormous penalties at risk, the GC has project operating costs (general conditions), overhead, and the opportunity cost of the profit they would have made if they'd been free to pursue another project after this one. All totaled, it simply doesn't make any sense that a GC in this position would continue to avoid all efforts to finish in a timely manner. In fact, about half the GC's in this position would willingly open their own wallets to pay overtime to any and all subs whose work could make the deadline. The other half will produce a spreadsheet showing how they intend to apportion the estimated penalties to each individual subcontractor should the job fail to be completed on time. In both cases, the "brass" will be on deck making absolutely sure that everyone is putting their back into it. With all of that understood, it's far more likely that this GC has submitted and received approval for time-extension change orders. There are only three things that could negatively affect their profitability at this point. Finishing early, paying subs for their losses due to delays, and finishing later than their most current end-date. From this perspective, it suddenly makes sense that the GC staffs the job with people who are perfectly befuddled about anything that would lead to either of those three outcomes. The goal is not to deliver the job in a timely manner. They pretend to need more information about our change order because they will foot the bill, not the client. Stalling for time works in their favor. Playing along with the notion that this is a typical change order deprives us of some important common ground. This is a very prominent GC with twenty plus years of experience in a large metro area. They wouldn't have survived this long if they allowed jobs to spiral out of control. 5 months beyond the year contract is a 42% overrun on direct job costs. Competitive GC bids at this level have between 3 and 5% profit. Even if there weren't any penalties for being late, this company would be losing money on the entire job inside of one month. Patiently explaining things to Project Managers who are playing dumb will never get us where we need to be. The entire "dumb but honest" construct is a dead-end. In contrast, we could shift to pressing this GC to provide evidence that they've addressed the very real threat of liquidated damages to the client for their egregiously late delivery. As part of the "team" we can point out that we're very concerned over the complete lack of visible best-practices as it applies to scheduling, workflows, and trade coordination. Should the GC fail to provide any of the requested evidence that they've handled these important things, we could let them know that we intend to draft a letter to the client informing them that we have no confidence that this GC is capable of delivering the contract. While we're at it, we could invite our fellow concerned subcontractors to sign on as well. See odds are very good that the GC's change orders for schedule extensions were partially justified by the estimated impact on the subs. If so, the client would expect those funds to be distributed to the subs. If not, the client knows that the subs were intentionally excluded. Both conditions expose the GC's gambit. This sets up a situation where some heretofore unheard of executive at the GC can sweep in, and clear up the "misunderstandings" by negotiating a solution with us.

WelshJ, I wasted a lot of time and emotion on a dead end, but I didn't end up with any paternity issues so that's good. Red3; Thank you for commenting, it reminds me of what I might have said at your age. While our estimable Thomas Powers has a good point, I would like to suggest a balancing argument. Many of the most rewarding things in life come from sharing experiences with others. If you want or think you might want to have kids, get married, or support friends and/or family, I would recommend considering how little time we actually have to achieve financial, social, and emotional stability. I would also recommend considering the goals and aspirations of people you haven't met yet. When I was in my 20's I was dimly aware that a hypothetical spouse might want to have kids eventually. When I actually met her, the window of fertility was at a use it or lose it stage. I didn't have the means to provide at the level that was needed. We worked our way through it but everything has been exponentially harder than it should have been. Growing up I heard "old people" complaining about how expensive things had become. By the numbers, things are much, much, harder for a twenty something in 2020. Life goals like marriage, babies, jobs, all of it has been grievously delayed for people your age. Timing has never mattered more. Taking on outrageous college debt just to "figure out" what you want to do, is a financial death sentence for the majority. Working experience is extremely hard to come by. I would recommend looking for work doing something that is always unpopular and necessary because it will provide wherever you go.

Now I'm not naming names here, but wow, did that ever apply to my younger self!

Mine goes back to a Pulitzer prize winning book entitled "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. The main character writes this hilariously insulting letter which he addresses to "Mongoloid. esq". This is playing on the British use of the term as a courtesy title, historically in reference to someone who's apprenticing to the higher station of knighthood. Americans would typically interpret .esq to infer that the named person is a lawyer. Hopefully "rockstar.esq" is sufficiently ridiculous that nobody takes the honorific seriously. As a kid, I wanted become a rock and roll musician. "Rockstar.esq" is a tongue in cheek way of saying that I'm apprenticed to my dream.

Flaky friends are not worth having. Their actions tell you that they don't respect you enough to keep their commitments, so accept their decision and move on. A low-ball job offer is an employer telling you what they think you're worth. Banks can tell when your bills are due and when your paycheck gets deposited. If your balance gets low enough, they'll pick just the right day to stall the deposit and post the bill payments to maximize overdrafts which get taken out of your paycheck. When you're broke, any accidental over-payment that's made instantly(credit/online), will take two weeks to refund.

I'm interested to hear what people would tell themselves. Here are a few things I wish I could tell my younger self. Outcomes matter more then intentions. Overcoming most of life's obstacles starts with getting out of your own way. Endurance is not the answer to everything.

That's a logical conclusion that overlooks a few things. The last wiring system in the U.S. to allow soldered connections was knob and tube. The insulation was cotton and the entire assembly relied on free-air and physical distance for safety. Free air was vital to keeping the wire insulation from breaking down. This is an especially big deal for old home owners who think they can hire a blown-in insulation contractor without paying an electrician to remove, disconnect, and replace all the knob and tube wiring in the exterior walls. However, that doesn't explain why solderless connectors are a code requirement. Lightning strikes melt out the solder in the electrical system. Now you might be thinking that this is where all that twisting makes a difference. Here's the thing. The twisting does hold things together, but there will be points that arc afterwards. Those arcs eventually build to where they're a source of ignition. A wirenut uses a cutting spring to bind the conductors. It expands and contracts with the conductors. The cap on the wirenut is made out of self-extinguishing, low smoke plastic. Some wirenuts require the conductors to be twisted together before installation, others don't. Most electricians prefer to twist the wires before installing the wirenut. That provides a more robust connection. For what it's worth, wirenuts have to support 14lbs to be UL listed as that's the average weight of a light fixture. With all that said, I think wirenuts are not the best choice for anything other than clean, dry, immobile and thermally consistent terminations. Especially with stranded wire. Stranded wire really benefits from crimp or lug-type terminations.

That would be step five! In many cases, the people backing the model see this as feature, not a bug. George, that's comedy gold and I will put it to use at my first opportunity! Also, I think innovation is less the attractant than the opportunity models create to evade culpability. Everyone can pinky swear to their wonderful intentions as the project unravels. I almost forgot the other aspect of these models that's like catnip to modern business culture. Collaboration! Now everybody get's to be seen participating in a consensus-driven thing without all the pesky work, accountability, and "old fashioned" standards like deadlines, or budgets. JHCC, Good points as always. Your comments remind me of an article I read a while back about what goes on in academic publishing. First off, it's incredibly self-referential. Citing other published works is done so frequently, that it's almost impossible to verify that the cited works (and the works they cite) actually stand up to scrutiny. Second, virtually nobody actually reads the scientific papers that get published. This was proven a few times by folks who filled out the center of their work with stuff like the script from Star Wars. More alarming than all of that, is this fundamental shift in the scientific method towards grant funded publications. Rather than testing their hypothesis with an experiment, researchers are intentionally creating experiments that generate a huge volume of data points. Most of it is noise, but that's ignored because the next step is to cull the database for information that supports their hypothesis. Technically, they do have supporting data, however it may bear little resemblance to the bigger picture. This is where things really get dicey. Peer review is supposed to include tests for repeatability. Some hot new publication comes out and everyone jumps on board, citing that work in their research, but nobody can actually repeat the results of the original experiment. Incredible amounts of time, money, and human capital are getting wasted on dead ends because the scientific method has been abandoned.

I must be getting older because I'm starting to notice second and third generations of the same bad business ideas that failed before. Although the marketing is different, the central line of thinking is the same. Hopefully I'll touch on something that helps others to identify and avoid these mistakes. Step one; We're not successful enough right now so we have to radically change our processes. OK, new approach time. Let's start by throwing out all of our "best practices". Lets huddle up and talk about innovation, synergy, silos, LEAN, Eatwhatchukill, etc. Step two: Build a model. Now a well-behaved model is going to give you the answer you wanted from the beginning. So naturally, you wanna build the model so that it begins with the conclusion, then generates semi-plausible data points to justify it. Bonus points if the data points are based on extrapolations from consensus driven experts. In my industry, this would be reference materials like the RS Means series. Step three: Focus on adjustments to your model. If your model really did generate the correct answer every time, well, there'd be no point in paying you to stick around right? Naturally you're going to recommend that the model requires someone with a deep understanding of what's going on to finesse the best possible answers. Step four: This is going to take a lot of time away from pesky stuff like best practices. Plus, the results of the time-honored approach might contradict our model. This is the way of the future, we can't march in two directions. You can always spot a rookie because they can't say that last part with a straight face. Step five: Now that we're in the future and nobody's doing things the old way, we have to adjust our thinking. This means that we're free to conjure up whatever mechanisms we might need to explain why reality refuses to admit that our model was right. If you stumble onto a particularly handy mythical mechanism, you might even be asked to generate a model to track that! Step six: Stockpile information. Any truly efficient model will convert the input into mountains of information. Show'em the math and they'll surely recognize what a scientific venture this really is. Step seven: This is really the best part. See the model isn't human so it doesn't make mistakes. The people inputting the information didn't make mistakes either. They were just working with what they were given. Now obviously everyone is doing their very best so it's just an unfortunate consequence that the new normal will be slightly delayed. Of course with every iteration of this cycle, we get more accustomed to the notion that success is relative. Feel free to tell your boss that every step takes you halfway to your destination, which is a really clever way of saying that you'll never get there. So that's it, seven easy steps to automate disaster! I've seen multinational firms that did this kind of thing as often as I've seen it with sole proprietorship's. I'm guessing that this secret seven step plan has laid down roots beyond the construction industry, but I don't know that for certain.

Basher's comment reminded me of something I neglected to mention earlier. I've looked for 9" diameter abrasives quite a bit and I've come to a few conclusions. First off, it's not too difficult to get 9" cutting disks, or the thicker edge/side grinding disks commonly used for cutting out a weld bead. I've seen 9" stone wheels for sale, but I noticed that virtually all the flap wheels, sanding disks (paper or composite), and backer products are made in 7" only. All the 6" and 8" stuff I found is basically made for bench grinders. I haven't found any wire wheels in 9", wire cups seem to top out at 5" or thereabouts. Same story on cup type diamond grinding wheels for stone work. I still prefer the 9" because it's slower RPM speed means you're got less vibration, noise, and violence with smaller diameter accessories. That being said, the 9" guard might not offer sufficient / proper protection with the smaller abrasives. I believe Bosch offers a range of smaller guards to fit my 9". I don't know anybody with a "mid-size" grinder to compare mine to, but it wouldn't surprise me if a 7" grinder using a 7" flap wheel was a bit faster cutting than my 9" with that same 7" flap wheel. I just had a quick peek, and it looks to me as though Bosch uses the same size motor for their 7" and their 9" angle grinders. Obviously the speed's been reduced on the 9" so it stands to reason that the 9" delivers higher torque than the 7" model. Being able to jump up to 9" stone wheels is a 38% increase in circumference, and the wheels cost pennies more than 7". Even if you rigged up a workable guard, you can't safely use a 9" wheel on a 7" grinder because it's spinning too fast.

I recently picked up a 9" Bosch that has a few features that I really appreciate. First off, it's got a locking trigger switch that's easily operable while wearing gloves. Second, the trigger end of the tool has a "D" guard that keeps the trigger, and the trigger hand protected. One unexpected perk of the "D" guard is that it's a wonderful handle for picking up, and moving the tool around without fear of pulling the trigger. That whole end of the tool can be locked in three positions which allows you to use it in different positions without straining your hand. Prior to this tool, it never occurred to me that a lot of handheld grinders get locked on so the user can shift their grip. Once the grip is shifted, you can't readily unlock the tool without shifting back. On a little grinder, that's maybe not a big deal. On a 9" handheld grinder, that'd give me a pucker factor of 9.3! It's also got vibration reducers in both grips. That makes a big difference to the fatigue. I specifically chose a 9" grinder because the RPM's are lower than the smaller ones, however they all have the same size spindle. I've found that reduces vibration significantly, without significantly reducing the work output. It's also quieter than a smaller grinder. Finally, the guard is attached and adjusted with a single throw lever. I don't need a tool to adjust it which makes it easy enough to live with that there's no incentive to taking it off. Just like George, I find the big'un to be a workout. It has enough torque to pull itself around. That effect is more pronounced when I'm bearing it's weight to grind a vertical surface. For horizontal work, the tools own weight is sufficient to maintain an aggressive cut. The stores around me pretty much don't stock any wheels above 7" diameter so that's what I've been running. Even so, the bigger wheels are more economical than smaller ones. That being said, there's a tipping point with this tool. With a 7" wheel, it takes somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 the time it would my 4-1/2" grinder to accomplish the same thing. HOWEVER, if I've gotta run it for more than an hour at a go, I get so tired that it's not safe for me to use without a break. Above and beyond that, it's better suited to tasks that can be done standing, with the work between hip and shoulder level, preferably with the majority of the grinding in a horizontal plane. It's also great for situations where you're trying to maintain flatness, because the diameter of the disk, and the shear weight of the tool make it pretty obvious when you're riding on the flat versus the edge of the abrasive. With all that said, I think the 9" hand held grinder is a wonderful tool. I recently completed a project where I'd spent three days grinding. Two of them were with 4-1/2" grinders, each consuming a flap disk per day and the last day was with the 9" (using a 7" flap wheel). After each day, I swept up my working area. I almost couldn't believe how heavy the grindings were on that last day. I'm guessing that I had 6 lbs of powdered steel in the dustpan, and the flap disk was maybe 1/3 worn. I had to take a lot of breaks from running the 9", but even with all the down time, I was getting a lot more done per day.

Another aspect that hasn't been mentioned is moisture. Wet hands get blisters much faster than dry ones.

In the construction industry, it's fairly common for commercial buildings with a parapet roof to have said parapet capped with bent sheet metal. I worked with/for a guy that had a decade of experience who referred to it as "break metal" in our estimates. I quietly corrected what I assumed to be a typo for about a year before he caught on and challenged me. I had to print out a photo of a bending brake being used to make cap flashing before he would consider the possibility that he was wrong. Even then, he felt the bending process was "like breaking something over your knee". At that point I asked him if he'd ever seen sheet metal being bent... The worst part of all of this, was that there were roofing contractors who would send in estimates with it spelled "break metal". Going off onto a completely different tangent, I knew a guy who collected a kind of pottery called Cloisonne. He found that he could often find seriously discounted Cloisonne pottery for sale on ebay if he misspelled it. Cloysonay, Cloiseney, etc.

Chris, I believe Frosty is suggesting round stock to be used as a wire wrapped handle on a stubby flatter like you might see in use under power hammers. Another idea that hasn't been presented yet is to drill three holes in line in the eye area of your stock to start with. Splitting the connecting bits will go much, much, faster, and a properly shaped hot-cutting chisel will self-register against the sides of the holes so the result is straight. From there, you could use a sequence of drifts to shape it. I forget where I saw it, but there was a smith who focused on making hammers, axes, etc, who would make a sequence of drifts for shaping the eye. Everything starts with one long piece of stock, which is tapered down to a point. From there, they sawed that long tapered tool into 2" or 3" long segments. A bit of grinding to round over the edges on each segment, and they ended up with four to five drifts that were used sequentially to get to the finished shape. As memory serves, this smith went to the trouble of doing that twice so they'd have a pair of matching drifts for each incremental size. It doesn't get mentioned much, but heavy top tooling works against the solo smith. Extra tool mass just adds inertia to overcome. A solo smith using stubby top tooling will get more done. The sequential drifts basically "drop in" and self-align on the slot. When I first started out, I tried to make a tool that started as a slitting punch, and tapered up to an eye shape. Dang thing was probably two pounds, and a foot long. I made it out of an old Jackhammer bit. It took me the better part of a day to punch/drift the hole. I didn't have a bottom bolster, so I tried using my hardie hole for the drifting. It took forever, and the darn drift was constantly getting stuck. Worst of all was the way it'd wick heat out of the stock. I gave myself a terrible case of blacksmiths elbow doing things the hard/wrong way. A small drift will move faster when you hit it, which means you'll be able to knock it out sooner. That smith I watched, had a quench bucket under their hardie hole, and a matched pair for each size of drift. They'd knock the drift in with two blows, flip it over, and knock it through the hardie hole with it's reciprocal. The whole process picks up speed as they progressed through the drifts. One of the hardest lessons for me in Blacksmithing, is that it's often faster to spend time making proper tools, so the work turns out. I blew out my elbow making stuff that I'm not happy with.

George, your reply reminds me of a science class assignment in middle school. We were supposed to write down all the necessary steps to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Almost all of us forgot to begin with instructions on how to obtain peanut butter, jelly, and bread. I don't think anybody recommended a particular type. To teach us a lesson, the teacher went out and bought the worst looking options that technically followed the most detailed instructions. The end product was unappealing.

George, Thank you for your suggestion. I think you're right, and I'll apply your advice where I can. Sadly, I suspect this is the natural outcome of a cost-cutting effort throughout my industry. Senior people are getting laid off and their responsibilities are being spread among several inexperienced workers who prioritize participation over production.

The volume of email at work has become unmanageable. I have always sorted emails into job specific folders. Two years ago, a project would go from beginning to end with 30 emails on smaller jobs, and perhaps 100 on bigger ones. Today, my job folders overflow with over 2,000 emails apiece. The jobs aren't bigger or more complicated. There seem to be two main causes of this increase. The first is that companies have shifted away from having a single point of contact in favor of "collaborative" teams. This has become the standard since the stay-at-home orders pushed people into telecommuting. The second cause, is that every message is treated like a forum to discuss anything tangentially related to the job. Everyone uses "reply", so I end up with a folder filled with dozens of emails that share the same subject heading. It's gotten to the point where I can't ask rep A to send me document B, without half a dozen mostly irrelevant email exchanges popping up before I get the requested document. It's like an echo chamber. Some jobs/teams are better than others, but it's getting to where I'm averaging 100 emails per hour on a bad day. I can't just "tune out" my emails, because I'm always up against a deadline to deliver things pertaining to documents that are typically emailed to me. Any ideas?

Cas037 By now, you're well aware that the answer to your first question is "it's complicated". To get correct answers to your current question, I would recommend that you visit the closest equivalents of a City Hall or chamber of commerce in your area. It has been my experience that police and tradesmen are seldom experts in business regulations. You're clearly trying to do things properly, so I want to encourage you to be thorough, and patient as you sort out whatever regulations apply to you. Depending on where you live, there may be regulations that make it very difficult to comply with the law. This arrangement is often intentional, as it serves to block businesses, and business arrangements that have caused problems for the society making the rules. There's an old saying attributed to G.K. Chesterton that applies here. "Don't ever tear a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."

Steve, I think this is a failure of engineering on all sides. Several years back, I was bidding on a modest middle school remodel in Denver. There was a bit of work in the school's theater. One key-note on a single page of the plans referred to some kind of dimmer. I ran the make and model to ground, eventually working my way from the manufacturer, to reps, to vendors, etc. My search ended with a theatrical lighting rep working in Las Vegas. Her proposal was over $200K, and really didn't make any sense at all. To look at the construction documents, you'd think this thing was a 2' square box. Turns out it's a five ton theatrical dimming monstrosity that requires dedicated cooling, sound proofing, and a reinforced concrete foundation! Naturally, the design team didn't bother to consider any of that when they stuck it in a broom closet. According to the Rep, "someone from Denver" reached out to her six months prior to ask a few questions, then disappeared. As far as I can tell, nobody on the design team spent any effort beyond throwing a "gotcha" note where no reasonable person would looking for it. I'm guessing that one of the General Contractors made a special effort to line-item that cost just so the Denver Schools people couldn't pretend to overlook a $200K difference in bid amounts. Three months after that deadline, it was back out to bid. Out of morbid curiosity, I downloaded the plans to see what they updated. This time, there were twenty five pages of plans showing how the theatrical lighting comes together! Along with all of that was an addendum from the school system basically asking the bidders to make suggestions to get the job back in budget.

pnut, Thank you for sharing those terms. "gobo" for go between is exactly the sort of wordplay nobody outside of that industry would know! I seem to recall the shaping apparatus on the end of a theatrical light being called a "snoot". There's an absolutely enormous chasm separating theatrical lighting and "normal" lighting from the perspective of an electrician. The people involved with making, selling, and controlling theatrical lighting operate as though they've never even considered the possibility that they might need to work with an electrical contractor to build a theater. In my area, they certainly don't comprehend fussy details like deadlines, or understandable proposals.

Frosty, your comments remind me of a number of imaginary "rights" that clients believe they have. I've had clients who imagined they had a "right" to demand that change order work be undertaken before the paperwork was completed. I've encountered quite a few who imagined they had a "right" to demand that I furnish all requisite information for them to purchase the material themselves, AFTER they had me price furnish and install. Then there's the time-wasters who never stop asking questions about the pricing. Nothing can ever be detailed enough to satisfy them. There's this perverse working relationship where they demand more detail in hopes that they can trust what they're looking at, but they don't trust you to tell them the truth.

I spend a fair amount of my time trying to track down viable manufacturers of weird stuff that Architects stick in their designs. It's generally a two to three phase process. The first phase is trying to identify the correct term for whatever the weird thing is. The second phase is trying to identify the market that the weird thing is directed towards. The third phase is often a long slow process of trying to get the maker(s) of weird things to answer two very simple questions. #1 How much does it cost? #2 How long does it take to get? In 99 out of 100 cases, if the Architect used the correct terms to describe the weird thing, or it's intended market, it would be instantly found. Here's a good example. We have a project where we're installing a lot of pole lighting at a mall. There are couple of poles with these weird projector heads on them pointing at an amphitheater. They're not theatrical lighting fixtures, and they're not your typical pole lights. The Architect asked for an accessory to these projectors and the only description was arbor something or other. The arbor people don't have a thing to do with pole lights, or stage lighting. They make these cast metal discs that have cut outs shaped like a tree. All sorts of tree species. They're generally installed in front of windows and skylights where they cast a tree shaped shadow on your floor. It turns out that the Architect didn't intend for the projector heads to hit the stage, they wanted them pointed at the ground in front of the stage! I suspect that the arbor people used a similar setup at a trade show to illustrate the effect of their discs. With all that said, if the Architect had used the term "Shadow Art" we would have found these things rather quickly.

Thomas, I can see how you came to that conclusion. I had to look up Sturgeon's law which cracked me up. I think you've got a good list there which might benefit from including the Pareto Principle. George, You're making excellent points as always. I think your comments about valuing intangible work are a perfect illustration of how people fail to understand the principles of estimating. You're absolutely correct that there's no way to prove a negative. That doesn't mean that the only way to effectively measure your value is to assume that paying the "going rate" will equate to a fair return on that compensation. Why have a lawyer? The simple answer is to mitigate risk. People buy insurance policies even though the majority never make a claim. They do this, because the cost to mitigate the risk is lower than the potential cost of the risk itself. Insurance companies can "prove" their value by pointing to the claims they paid out to policy holders. If a lawyer is lucky enough to never have a client in need of their services, they might advertise themselves as a talisman! Everyone else will have plenty of work experience to cite where they did their job to protect a client from risk. Since everyone's portfolio of work experience will be different, it follows that their value to the client will be different. The market rate for the services will therefore make a lawyer with a better portfolio fit a better deal to the client. Ultimately, this all goes to show that price pointing professional labor to market rates is an excellent way to disconnect an individuals actual value from reality. The effect on the whole is to reward the individuals working at low end of the professional spectrum with wage increases deprived of the professionals working at the high end of the spectrum. This happens in collective bargaining agreements all the time. The most skilled and valuable employees in a given agreement are paid exactly the same as the least skilled and valuable employees.

Marc, I appreciate your effort to explain your point of view. I think I have a better understanding of where you're coming from. When I was a teenager, I was certain of a lot things that I don't know now. I've learned to spot situations where neither the "either", nor the "or" offered sufficient explanation of what happens. Fairly often, the perceived options don't fit because the situation is misunderstood. Let's say we have a situation where people are skittish about naming their price. Sure, it could be that people are morally constipated on the topic, or they're bound by taboo. Assuming that people aren't getting what they want, this situation represents a real obstacle to ambition. Now let's say we have a situation where people identify themselves with a brand, a movement, a trend, a trade, or a scholastic achievement. That creates a super handy way to price-point their rate, which bypasses the taboos and moral constipation. So far, everything stacks up and it sorta makes sense. Except for all the situations where people get higher compensation and better working conditions than they would have asked for. Price pointing labor converts the individual's work into a commodity that is no better or worse than all the people working at that price point. That practice trades the arguing over your value for the security of your position. I've seen industry adapt to this approach and it has a lot of down-sides. "Black box" engineering is an easy example. Your job is to take a range of inputs, and do whatever is necessary to generate a set of outputs. If you become a problem to the firm, they'll un-socket you from your cubicle/workstation and plug in an equally credential colleague. Over time, it's a simple matter to apply this process to designing replacements for all the colleagues. This is why factories replaced blacksmiths. It's my humble opinion that the real reason that people resort to convolutions over wages is not due to any of the above. I think it's a far more simple problem than that. I think the problem is that we don't teach or practice estimating. Nobody knows what a good value is. We see arguments framing it in terms of owning a home, or paying your way out of college debt. The concrete concepts of a market rate, or actual utility to society, are completely ignored in favor of pretending that all value judgments are stymied with the lazy reply; "it depends". YES, it depends on the factors that matter. Measure those, and you'll get your value for that situation, in that market, for that point in time. The hard truth for many people, is that they just aren't that good at what they do. If they actually focused on what generates value, the world would be a better place. Just yesterday I put up a post about how "mystery stuff" is always free and easy. Whenever people don't understand the underpinnings of a value proposition, they tend to assume that all value is attributed to the things they do understand. Stuff costs a lot. Seems like a bag of "stuff" is easy to come by, must be greed. Superficial understandings lead to resentment. Sure, you could just demand a higher wage. Basic economics dictate that if everybody got a higher wage, everything would cost more. Is that better? My point is that modern businesses overwhelmingly assess the value of human labor using proxies, price points, social capital, and inertia. Lazy process-driven approaches developed and administered by H.R. Applicable skills testing is virtually non-existent. In many markets everyone is a commodity. Virtually all construction work is awarded by competitive bid. It's silly to pretend that all bidders would deliver an equal value of work. They're not a commodity, but they're evaluated that way. Incredibly stupid fallacies take hold because the people making decisions, don't know what they're looking at. We have people who assume that "lowest bidder" means they're incompetent, yet the entire industry uses competition to identify market leadership. There are people who genuinely believe that cost is an accurate indicator of quality, who made decisions without bothering to measure the quality. Few take the time to consider how difficult it truly is, to make a good thing cheap. I meet a lot of clients who have an adversarial relationship with reality. It's a terrible model to follow.

I recently bid to a gent from out of state and as we were going over the work we got to comparing notes about how things are done in Chicago versus Denver. As we chatted about the project, he was making notes to present to the client. He kept saying that he wanted to "over explain" things to avoid misunderstandings with his client. He kept struggling to find ways to "dumb it down" without minimizing the impact a decision could have on the client's satisfaction. Eventually I joked that most client's default condition is to assume that mystery stuff is always free and easy. The average client doesn't place much value in the things they don't understand. So it's generally good practice as a bidder to consider your proposal from your clients point of view. Ask yourself what "mystery stuff" is expensive and difficult. Those are the things you should take pains to explain. I recommend pricing breakouts based on functional elements rather than rattling off labor, material, overhead, profit, tax, etc. If they didn't know about the mystery stuff, they're not going to know what the correct amount of labor to install it should be. That being said, I would encourage bidders to be cautious about providing too many breakouts. Prices are seldom remembered with appropriate context.