For the last few weeks, I’ve been inundated with a barrage of emails with attached “invoices.” About 90% are caught by the spam filter, but that other 10% ends up in my inbox. I have no problem with simply pressing “delete” to rid myself of them, but there’s a...

Part I: Computerization Begins The arrival of the first computers 50 years ago signaled that truss design had come of age. And they came just in time. We urgently needed them to meet the growing demand for truss designs. But they didn’t come with experienced operators – in the...

Computer-simulated product testing is being used increasingly in modern engineering and manufacturing because it provides a low-risk, time- and cost-efficient means of modeling system performance using a wide array of variables before a physical prototype has been created. The following article...

“When will our computer project(s) be finished?”, we are often asked. Even after 50 years of trying, there is no easy way to explain what it takes to get “done.” However, one of our industry’s finest leaders offered the best advice 40 years ago. “We’ve...

Part Three:  Apartment Survival Strategies in the 1980s A few stalwarts “lived to tell” how they survived the Eighties, but none knew magic. What they did then works just as well today—expanded markets, refined quotes, and controlled costs. And in the collapsing...

Part Two: The Turbulent 1980s For CMs to prosper in the 1980s, after surviving the “double-bubble” of apartment building in the 1970s, required great tenacity and innovation. Projects grew in size and complexity. Developers gained momentum and began employing scheduling and...

Could a cyber attack cost you all your layouts and job files? Yes it can, as a truss plant found out last month, a victim of ransomware. Overnight, a despicable cyber robber encrypted all the files on his server, and displayed a warning on his system indicating an exorbitant ransom, with a price...

The call for more designers, salespeople and just about every other admin personnel is getting louder by the day. There are not enough hours in the week to meet sales demands. What if you could provide your team with tools that would give them more time? This way, you could save money by having...

If you’re hiring or looking for a job, watch the Super Bowl telecast just before half-time. You’ll see the seriousness of the struggle for good people in our industry. After viewing, you may question the Super-sized investment. But, in your business, you know that you have to spend...

Because I’ve been receiving great feedback from readers (thanks for that), in my July article I also welcomed suggestions of topics. One reader stepped forward with an idea which, as I thought more about it, became the start of this month’s piece on how far we’ve come as an...