Gadgets for designers part 1

One of my good clients called me the other day to talk about the Ipad, one of my favorite gadgets of all time.  She wanted to kind of "justify" the purchase for a Christmas present to her husband, and wanted to know a little about how a design type person might use one.  Now the first thing with Ipad you have to decide is 3G or plain wi-fi?  Not a trivial question, as the 3G model costs about $130 extra.  Now you may think, "I am only going to use this at home or where ever there is wi-fi"  so why spend those extra bucks?  And, if you want to use the 3G for data on the road, you will be paying about $25/month for the privilege.  However, you can turn on and off the 3G data on a month to month basis, so when you are not traveling you can save those dollars.

The main reason to get the 3G is that the ipad will give you location information for the maps function. The maps on the Ipad are the best I have ever seen, and I am a map freak from way back.  They use your location information to show where you are, like a giant GPS, but with so much more information.  You can overlay traffic info, or satellite photo imagery, or just do a location search for any local business or landmark.  You can have it draw routes for you, and you can view all those street view photos from google while you are traveling along (and the spouse is driving).  For information while traveling it just cannot be beat.

But what about the business uses for Ipad?  Remember my friend "Bill"?  He got one (without the 3G, he is sorry about that now) to show potential clients a quick slide show of his scariest photos of buildings with long deferred maintenance.  He can get it booted up in 30 seconds, and give the client 100 good reasons to hire him in 5 minutes or less.  Try doing that with a laptop. For photo slide shows, they are just awesome.  Sure you can do some of those things with a smart phone now, but the screen size is just not going to cut it.

Another business use is Autodesks sketchbook pro, a digital drawing program that you use with a small stylus to create ideas drawing freehand or with a grid on screen.  I use it as an engineer to annotate photographs.  You can load a jpg file into the program, then use the stylus to make notes onto the file, great for renovation projects when you are trying to convey your ideas for existing items to your CAD people.  You can also use it when meeting with a client to sketch up quick ideas for approval.  The touchscreen is way more intuitive than trying to use a laptop, and the sketch program only costs $10 or less.

I just downloaded a dictation program from Dragon for my Ipad the other day.  It works amazingly well, no more "training" the program to your voice.  And it was FREE.  There are so many good apps out there for low or no cost, it never ceases to amaze me.

Now the ipad does not have a camera, or any usb ports.  I do not see this as a big deal, as you can use a program like dropbox to access any files you may need while traveling.  To get photos into the ipad's memory though, you need to load them through I tunes from another computer.  All in all, the ipad is a great business tool,  as well as being a lot of fun.

Bill tries his first Billing

Remember my good buddy, Bill?  He did start that business of his doing building inspections, and by now has written 15-20 proposals for inspection work.  But, those proposals now have to go through that arduous process of being approved by HOA committees.  It has been a slow frustrating process for him, luckily he was not dependent upon living hand to mouth.

He did manage to get in one little emergency type inspection though, and invoiced a token amount for it.  It had been well over 30 days since this billing of his, and he called me to ask how he should be trying to collect for it.  First off, I told him don't even start thinking about that money until 30 days have passed.  I also told him to just place a call to the business and ask for "accounts payable".  Most likely his payment problem could be solved by talking to a low level staff person.  This is the best way, don't involve the professional staff in these matters unless you cannot get satisfaction any other way.

Cash flow for the small business is of course "King".  Without it, we might all as well be fishing all day, at least that pays in food (sometimes).  But of course we can't let the pursuit of the almighty dollar consume us either.  We need to walk that fine line between the clients needs, and our needs.  We all know, put the client first and all else will fall into place, right??  Sometimes this happens, sometimes not.

A few years back I did have an architect client, who took putting the client first a little too far.  The project was for a high end bar/ restaurant, on a site that the developer did not actually own. (red flag)  I was contracted to do the MEP design, on an hourly basis. (without a retainer) This client proved to be very demanding, making lots of additions and changes on the fly, and wanting construction documents in very short order.  To make a long story short, both I and the architect busted our tails getting the documents ready for bidding.  On the day I was to turn over final stamped drawings, I had a bad feeling about the ultimate outcome, so I called the architect and asked him for payment before stamping.  I suggested he get a check from this developer as he turned over our design.  The architect flat out rejected that idea, telling me "that's just not the way we do business here".  I relented and turned over the stamped plans, and the inevitable happened.  The project died, the developers asked for "time" to make "payments".  I eventually got paid, but I am afraid the architect did not.

The moral of this story is, due diligence is a must on any "unknown" clients, as well as a good retainer to be credited against the final invoice.  The time to negotiate these items is before starting work, if they won't work with you, better let them go on to the next sucker.  Save yourself the grief, remember, you could be fishing.

Marketing Brain Stems

Years ago back in the 90's a engineer friend of mine used to stop by the office, and provide some much needed comic relief.  His name was Mike, and he was (and still is) what you would call "a character".  One day we were all CADDing away, the HP pen plotter rolling out another plot, the office stereo was playing Tom Petty: "Running Down a Dream" , and he stopped by.  He started telling story after story, talking about engineers he had worked with.  He described one or two of these guys as "brain stems": engineers you could just shut up into a little room, occasionally sliding pizza under the door.  They would never interact with other people, just sit there and crank away at their designs all day.  You could never put them in front of clients, they were just not meant to see the light of day.  The old joke about engineers is true:  How can you tell the who is the extroverted engineer?  He's the one looking at the other guys shoes.

Now, all of us engineers have a little of this brain stem mentallity in us.  We can be content to just whack away at calculations all day, and not see another person.  This works just fine when the phone rings, and work just flies in the door on it's own.  But most of us will need to hit the street and press the flesh in order to get the projects/work/clients we need.  This involves getting out there, being a "joiner", speaking to groups, and generally mixing it up with potential clients.

One of the first things I did when I opened my firm in 1991 was to join ACEC, I also attended AIA meetings (not AA).  I avoided NSPE, as I did not really see the point in hanging with other socially challenged engineers.  I wanted to be where my clients were, and civil engineering firms and architects needed my help with MEP design.  I always kept a stock of business cards in my wallet, quick on the draw.  I even made "cold calls", just walking into architects offices unannounced and started talking.  I did pretty well with that approach, much better than trying to get through on the phone, and more often than not, I came back to the office with some floor plans ready for engineering.  Sometimes clients would ask me for a price, right on the spot.  I would always say that I needed time to study the project a little, and get back to them within 24 hours with a nice, written proposal.  The very few times that I have just thrown out numbers, I have been very sorry in the long run.  Our is a business of exactness, and a well written proposal is the only way to start out a well though out design.

Next time, we shall talk a little about "collecting that fee"...