'Talk to Your Plumber' book speaks volumes
HAVING PICKED THE wrong checkout line in the grocery store, as I always do, I settled in for a long wait. Looking around for something to read to kill...
Adobe innovations streamline collaboration
WHEN IT COMES to maximizing productivity on any construction or renovation project, having the participants actively review a document has a lot of advantages...
Four things that drive your customers crazy
HAVE YOU WONDERED why the most irritated people in the world always call you? Surely it has less to do with you than the kind of contracting business...
Winterizing plumbing in vacation homes
A READER WROTE: I will be winterizing homes this next season and was wondering if you could point out some areas to watch for in regards to refrigerators...
Sole-source specs: risky for designers, owners
I AM SURE that every contractor and vendor has encountered the frustration of finding a specification that limits acceptable products too much. If your...
Stand by your word and never cut your prices
BY BOB MIODONSKI PUBLISHER AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR ONE OF THE REAL benefits to me of our recently completed Comfortech RoadShow Series was the chance to...
How to make your marketing pay you back
BY ADAMS HUDSON MARKETING CONSULTANT IT'S KIND OF PAINFUL. No matter how well you plan, part of your marketing success will always be based on trial and...
Managing projects virtually, not physically
BY H. KENT CRAIG MECHANICAL CONTRACTOR IN THE NEW WORLD economic climate, a world where projects have been broken down into their constituent parts and...
The 'Spitzerization' of the insurance industry
BY SUSAN LINDEN McGREEVY CONSTRUCTION ATTORNEY SINCE LAST FALL, when New York Attorney General (and now candidate for governor) Eliot Spitzer took on...
Module does everything except shake hands
BY WILLIAM AND PATTI FELDMAN COMPUTER AUTHORITIES SOMETIMES IT SEEMS that computer technology is getting integrated into the ways of the mechanical contracting...
70+? Stop paying life insurance premiums
BY IRVING L. BLACKMAN TAX ACCOUNTANT ONE THING IS certain about practicing tax law. Nobody knows it all. What's the result? Specialization. A practitioner...
Some mistakes are bigger than others
BY DAVE YATES IF I HAD A DOLLAR for every blunder I've made during my past 35 years in the plumbing trade, I could retire a wealthy man right now. However,...
Real-time energy load calculations, Part 1
BY MARK EATHERTON HYDRONIC HEATING AUTHORITY OVER THE YEARS, I've had the opportunity to spend many hours in working boiler rooms when the outside temperature...
Scope Deconstruction Reduces Mistakes
PROJECT MANAGEMENT has always been and will always be more of an art than a science, no matter how many metrics we apply to our actions and reactions....
Storm Clouds Gathering Over U.S. Economy?
I KNOW! I KNOW! This is supposed to be a tax column, showing you how to keep it, once youve made it. In the same spirit of lets explore another area of...
Photoshop Elements 3.0 Organizes Job Photos
ANY CONTRACTOR who has discovered the advantages of taking photos to document everything going on at a jobsite, ordinary or unanticipated, is likely to...
Thinking Outside the Box DHW Systems
I HEARD A TERM from a contractor customer the other day that conjured up visions of an antique domestic hot water system I remember my dad talking about....
What Can You Do About Mistakes in Bids?
IT IS UNAVOIDABLE that, once in a while, someone is going to make a mistake in pulling a bid together. It could be a misplaced decimal, transposing numbers,...
The Long Hydronics Learning Curve
DURING MY visit in March to ISH in Germany as part of the National Association of Oil Heating Service Managers group, I had a number of intriguing opportunities...
Follow Giants' Lead to Prepare for Change
UNLIKE THE PAST few editions of our Book of Giants, the 2005 report carries good news for most of the nations top mechanical contractors. The chart that...
Get More Green from Your Yellow Pages Ad
THIS WHOLE YELLOW Pages thing bugs me. If youre a Yellow Pages ad sales rep, you probably wont like this column, so Id recommend you turn the page or...
New Ways to Reach You in Person and Online
NOW IN OUR 51st year of publication, CONTRACTOR has been the leading magazine to bring you industry news as well as management advice on how to improve...
Make Customers Confront Issues - in Writing
I HAVE JUST STARTED serving as an arbitrator in a multimillion-dollar case between an owner and a contractor, where it appears that both sides had very...
2004 Wealth Transfer Plan Test Reveals a Mess
BACK IN EARLY 1995 I wrote a long column headlined, A new plan to beat the estate tax. The column said in part: If you use the right tax tools and techniques...
Why We Should Become More Like GCs
BACK IN THE DAYS of King Arthur and His Knights of the Accidentally-Oval-Because-the-Specs-were-Screwy Table, a general contractor was first and foremost...
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