Running on Half Empty

Two more weeks for the staff. A couple will be hired occasionally afterward at an hourly contract rate for minor work on the CAD and Admin side as we wind things down at the end of July.

We're taking photos on Friday for a Good-Bye card to send out to clients, contractors and mfr sales reps. Something of a formal announcement to help stifle a few rumors that have started up (fully anticipated.) We'll have an extended post-shoot luncheon for the staff. The card and message will be posted on the website.

Nothing fun about this but it's an interesting experience for whatever may come in the future.

Everyone in the Lifeboats

Workload fell to where it has kept us below the float line for some time now. The backlog of work is there but no money is available to fund the projects. Even those from late last year that were supposedly financed have parked and are not moving. Had one owner want the design team to hurry up for a deadline for HUD submission which triggered the letter from the architect stating exactly how much money was required to cover unpaid invoices going back to September 2009, when it was required and how payment would occur for the work yet to be done to meet the requested due date. While valid, in the owner's eyes it essentially postponed or even killed the project. Better than spending time for invoices never paid.

The staff was not pleased to hear the news of our shutdown. Timing was such that doing it now allowed us to go out respectably with as much honor and fairness remaining to us. Certainly different from other companies that try to continue and simply bury themselves in debt to where the only choice is bankruptcy. We chose to bow out gracefully since we'll have to deal with the same people in future years.

The staff will receive letters of recommendation, assistance with resume preparation, assistance in partner contact with other companies for interviews and, of course, financial compensation due to them. The staff gone after June 11. The principals will be out of the office space by July 30 and working from their home office during August & September at about half-time. After that it's no job time although there will be some construction issues for which some design work may be necessary.

What will I do? Nothing firm yet although since I'm still getting over the reality shock of really going through with the shutdown. Slowly though I'm putting things together in my head, preparing some groundwork issues on my end and expect to have a plan ready by the end of June. I've been in the engineering business for thirty-five years and only been out of the loop for a few months early in my career. I want to look at this situation as a opportunity for better than to be negative and miserable.

Contrary to what most people experience during this economic bust, I'm actually thinking of taking some time off before plowing back into it. I long ago trained myself to save money for unexpected situations and I then expanded that attitude to where I have enough to hold out for well over a year. I've pretty much committed to staying in the business, at least 51% in favor of it now. Options for other work activities exist but I'm not sure about them. I have a natural bent for HVAC design and it has served me well. Passing along knowledge to younger engineers and designers would be a way of giving back. I certainly do not want to join a company with the goal of "buying" into the company.

Here Comes the 2x4

Company will be shutting down. More later.

Speed Bumps on the Road of Progress

Took Wednesday off this week for mental health after spending much time on a large apartment project that went out last Friday for a HUD submission. Didn't really need it but there's basically nothing to work on after spending Monday and Tuesday cleaning my office and email account. On Monday we had to reprint everything on the electronically for the apartments as the owner decided to change the name of the project. That after the owner decided last Wednesday that several of the apartment types were too small and needed more area. Funny that the same owner told the architect the unit types were too large about five months ago and needed to be smaller. Ah, the sweet sound of add service work.

Part of my day off included a trip to Best Buy for a couple 320GB, 7200 rpm, hard drives. I'll be doing a drive upgrade and backup on my PC at work. I've tried getting a backup drive since I'm paranoid about drive failure - a not uncommon thing around our office recently with machines of the same model and age. Hopefully, the change-over will go easy and as planned.

Our CAD manager has been trying for two weeks to get AutoCAD 2010 installed on the machines for those of us still using R2009 and R2008. I'm in the latter group having the older version. I was suppose to have gotten R2009 during the middle of last year.

I've had Revit MEP Suite 2009 on my PC for over one and half years. I've never used it. Why? No freaking Revit work - period. Every Revit project that we agreed to do using Revit has died either before we got a model file or shortly after we got it. We had some that would have been perfect for first-time project 12 to 20-story hotels were some. Other projects clients have done in Revit were not agreed to be done in Revit for MEP. That's right we've had Revit for almost two years and haven't done a project, real or practice. Not sure that it matters much given the low quantity of work. Frustrating. Yet, it may be an opportunity in the near future should a Revit project happen.

Friday's hard drive swap at work was thwarted by lack of a data cable. No spare in the case nor in the server room. Has to wait until Monday when I'll take in a cable from home. Purchased a Thermaltake BlacX Duet docking station for home in an attempt to further a drive swap on a notebook that failed a few months ago. Data transferred just fine as the Seagate Disc Wizard did the job. Big headache is a screw holding the old hard drive to the secured mounting cage - will not come loose and now the Phillips slot is borked. Tried it warm and cold and with needle-nose pliers. No luck. Next step is grinding it off with a Dremel tool. Such a headache to go to 500GB from 160GB.

Once done with the hard drive swap at work and installing the second HD for a RAID-1 configuration through the BIOS, I'll go back to a spec section rewrite I worked on last Thu/Fri dedicated to "Mechanical Sequences of Operation" that I started three years ago and never really finished. After using it several times and complaining to myself for never finishing it, the time finally arrived. Couldn't get last week off so much of my time was spent doing office stuff. Over 100 sequences identified. Some system sequences will be isolated as insert supplements due to complexity and degree of LEED certification.

From then on, I'm back to the apartment project for coordination (read "changes"), COMcheck calculation which will require using a spread sheet to total all the surfaces (two glass types, multiple window sizes, two roof types, four directions, outer walls and courtyard - had to do it on another project a couple years ago so the spreadsheet is already formatted) and then spec review/redline/change.

Got news on Friday that was a bit confusing. Not sure where some things are headed at work. Some annual expense issues are coming up and the discussions make me a bit uneasy about workload this year. Could be sheer lack of information on my part. If so, the decisions made are part of the corporate officers responsibility and I'm not one of those. Odd situation considering how much future work is on the books. Big difference between the past year and those before has been the time lag between major milestone issues for projects. We once had DD/Permit/CD issues that were spaced about two weeks apart. Now they're a month apart and may include a couple more milestone issues. Time equals money and the projects are eating up more time.

Got to remind myself to keep a positive outlook but I'm thinking of making some preparations for the future.