Visit the latest set of photos for the construction of the mobile demonstration kitchen at this link.

And a simple way to bring the secrets to the surface
by Andrew McCoy , Fred Sargent
Published in Electrical Contractor Magazine: December 2011

A good-looking set of year-end financial statements can be a source of pride for an electrical contracting firm. It’s too bad that even the best of those neatly bound booklets blessed by CPAs fail to contain critical indications of where the business may really be headed.  To read more, go to: http://www.ecmag.com/index.cfm?fa=article&articleID=13407 .

Today was a great day for progress on the Mobile Demonstration Unit for the Blacksburg Farmer's Market.  Student volunteers arrived at 11am and worked all day.  We were able to grind, scrape the trailer, prepare the metal with primer and apply three coats of paint to the metal trailer.  We chose a maroon red for the color on the trailer. 
Many thanks to the students who worked so hard today.  Go to the following link to see some pictures of the progress we made: https://sites.google.com/site/blacksburgmobilekitchen/home .
Next, we will be welding the superstructure onto the trailer chassis.  Then, we will be attaching the decking and building the sides.
Till then....

Customers for Life:  A Gutsy Move to Shut Down and Start Over

Published: August 2011

Even for the famously entrepreneurial and highly creative Howard Schultz, it was a radical idea. Tough times needed tough measures, though. On Feb. 26, 2008, at precisely 5:30 p.m., Schultz—who re-entered Starbucks as chief executive officer that year to revitalize it—instructed staff to politely escort every one of its (millions of) customers out of the stores. Then, all 7,000 Starbucks’ U.S. locations simultaneously closed early.

Read the full article online in Electrical Contractor Magazine: http://www.ecmag.com/?fa=article&articleID=12986

[The following is an excerpt from a Column in Electrical Contractor Magazine that is written by Fred Sargent, of Sargent Electric and me]

The 100-Percent Success Factor
Anyone who has attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony knows what they are about to hear when local government officials head for the microphone. Two phrases, “on time” and “on budget,” often reverberate, and those with project or industry knowledge might wince, as the speaker enthusiastically praises everyone who completed the monumental public project. Often, unfortunately, neither term is accurate.
“On time” and “on budget” are favorite phrases in the construction industry. They are so popular that, when Googled, more results appear than one could possibly read in an entire lifetime. They are terms that directly relate to one of the most-coveted goals in construction: project completion.

Read the full article online in Electrical Contractor Magazine: http://www.ecmag.com/?fa=article&articleID=12787

[The following is an excerpt from a Column in Electrical Contractor Magazine that is written by Fred Sargent, of Sargent Electric and me]

Beginning the Journey
Vilfredo Pareto loved to garden. One day he realized that 80 percent of the peas from his patch came from 20 percent of the pea pods. That proportion matched the ratio that he had already uncovered elsewhere in his investigations as the economist who gave the world the 80/20 rule. Whether they have known the Pareto Principle by that name or simply as a rule-of-thumb fraction, people have understood it as an axiom in countless applications for decades since, and it is alive and well in the electrical contracting industry.
Electrical contractors would agree that a majority of their revenue comes from a small number of their customers. Large electrical contracting corporations that have publicly traded stock dutifully point out in their annual reports—which should be a warning to potential investors—that they also depend on a relatively small number of their customers for the biggest part of their total income. Most of the contractors we know, who are not compelled to make such legally mandated disclosures, would cautiously admit to the same kind of over dependency. The 80/20 rule might not apply exactly, but it fits closely.

Read the full article online in Electrical Contractor Magazine: http://www.ecmag.com/?fa=article&articleID=12583

[The following is an excerpt from a Column in Electrical Contractor Magazine that is written by Fred Sargent, of Sargent Electric and me]

Bell, Edison and you
In a recent keynote address, Robert Catell, chairman of the New York State Smart Grid Consortium, characterized the state of the electric grid in a way that he knew his audience could understand. He imagined what would happen if two famous inventors came back to life to view the legacy of their original creations.
“If Alexander Graham Bell returned to earth today, the progress in telecommunications over the last 125 years would be mystifying; a cellphone would be as incomprehensible to him as a phaser from ‘Star Trek.’ But if Thomas Edison came back today, not only would he recognize our electric energy industry technologies, he could probably fix them.”
This sums up a current dilemma of our electrical grid and our industry; the same basic technology now extends nationwide.

Read the full article online in Electrical Contractor Magazine: http://www.ecmag.com/?fa=article&articleID=12356

February 24th, 2011: Blacksburg, VA.  As part of teaching the graduate course Innovation in Construction, I have the joy of working with many talented students.  To set the stage, the course is seminar-based; 12 students read weekly articles and sit around for two-and-a-half hours discussing them.  Once per semester, one student is appointed to lead discussion for the group.  The student is required to propose questions, guide discussion, collect individual summaries of the articles from other students and, finally, draw conclusions.  This stage will be the beginning of posts, on this website, regarding group discussion and individual conclusions about innovation in the construction industry.

The following conclusions were drawn by the student leader.  The topic of the day was broad: we began thinking of examples of innovation, barriers to their adoption and needs of the industry.  In the interest of keeping this post brief, the group agreed on:

1. It can be argued that clients drive the market in the industry, this puts a large amount of importance on the education of the younger generations to understand what is possible in the industry and make the next wave of homeowners and business clients more apt to push for innovation in their future projects.
2. Ideas, trends, and market drivers in the industry are cyclical – just like fashion and art. This does not devalue an innovation that was recycled, it simply allows more opportunity for success.
3. Craftsmanship is an art, and while the market may swing towards it or away from it at times, it will always be appreciated.
4. It is imperative that we as young professionals entering the industry remember that we have a responsibility to our society in the way we go about doing business and building projects.
5. The construction industry has a much larger scope than that of the activities which occur on the jobsite, and though it may be difficult to quantify progress in these sectors of the industry, they all have an effect on the growth of the construction industry.
6. Innovation in the industry is sometimes developed by those with an outsider‘s perspective on things – the Crystal Palace was an example of how someone with a gardener‘s background can bring a different point of view and new ideas to design and construction.

More to come; stay tuned.