This post is a bit different than anything you have found here before. I’ve been on the road (and needed a quick post for today). Thanks to Vita Corimbi, a member of Killian’s Angels and Mullaney, I’ve learned the lyrics to a traveler’s song that helps you enjoy the thrill of flying.



Here's a link to the band's website.



And a link to the video of the song being performed.



Workin’ for the TSA



Livin’ in a single wide in Georgia

My part time job was checkin’ groceries for ya

Just dealin’ with the crap that landed in my lap

Depressed, frustrated and tired of gettin’ fat!



I couldn’t seem to rise above my station

I couldn’t much afford an education

Then I watched those towers fall

Answered my country’s call

But the recruiter said, “Ma’am, you’re too old for combat!”



Well I would not be deterred

Those terrorists got me perturbed

And I knew I had to give back to my flag

I went down and I applied

On the convictions part I “may have” lied

And now I get to pilfer thru your bags



Oh I got a job, workin’ for the TSA

With a benefits package and a 401 K

Got no teeth and no integrity

Just blame Homeland Security

Cuz I got a job workin’ for the TSA



Put wallets, change and keys

In the plastic bucket please

Take off the belt around your waist

I don’t care if your pants fall

Believe me I’ve seen it all

Make sure your Prince Albert’s not in my face



Oh I got a job, workin’ for the TSA

With a benefits package and a 401 K

Quit my job at the Piggly Wiggly

Now I get to grope your jiggly’s

Cuz I got a job workin’ for the TSA



Lose your shoes, your belt, your hat

And don’t you be lookin’ at me like that

You’ll miss your flight if I get attitude

Step in here for your X-ray

Feet on diagram, hands this way

HA! Now I know just what you look like nude!



Oh I got a job, workin’ for the TSA

With a benefits package and a 401 K

My future’s lookin brighter

HEY- GIVE ME THAT LIGHTER!

Cuz I got a job workin’ for the TSA



Yes I AM airport security

Everyone’s gotta listen to me

I can give the enhanced pat down if I please

I’ll put on some Marvin Gay

And pour some chardonnay

And give YOUR benefits package an extra squeeze! (ooh, what you got in there!)



Oh I got a job, workin’ for the TSA

With a benefits package and a 401 K

Grandma’s can’t escape my charms

Their fake hips set off alarms!

Cuz I got a job workin’ for the TSA



Now thanks to that shoe bomber and his shoe

You can’t even take your water through

So dump your cokes, your Mountain Dews

Pay twice as much at Hudson News!

But that’s just what you’re gonna have to do!



Oh I got a job, workin’ for the TSA

With a benefits package and a 401 K

Well you’re a member of my church

When you get a cavity search

Cuz I got a job workin’ for the TSA

You know how you keep hearing about change?  And how everything is going to keep changing even faster?

Well, here is the first wave - the Structure Sensor. It is a device that captures the shape of the real world around you. Every architect, designer, sculptor, and contractor on the planet will “need” one of these. I know I do. And at under $400 for the device that mounts on your iPad, you will be seeing these devices everywhere. Maybe you already have. This Kickstarter Project reached its goal in November and should have shipped a lot of them by now.

Here are three links to check it out.

This is the home page for the device’s website.

This link is to the Kickstarter page.

This link is to a short review of the Structure Sensor.

Professional Liability Insurance [Prof Liab Ins] is what I am referring to. I carried Professional Liability Insurance for 30 years, and didn't have a single claim. It really seemed like Prof Liab Ins was a waste of money. Then there was a project with leaky walls. There was a report by a fellow architect saying that our design was at fault because the walls leak and that is against the building code. The attorneys could understand that. They couldn't understand my rebuttal that waterproofing additive in excess of what was specified was preventing the masonry from bonding properly. Perhaps they did understand but the law isn't scientific; it is more like poker. You may not win with the best hand if you can be bluffed well enough. And the insurance companies are there to minimize the cost - not to determine whether you are innocent.

We had a mediation to see if a settlement could be worked out. We couldn't because the owner had decided that they wanted brick veneer added to the concrete block building. An elastomeric coating would have cost $25,000. The brick veneer cost $300,000.

For the next year each side maneuvered with motions on their way to a civil trial. After depositions and more motions, a second mediation to avoid the expense of the trial brought about a $160,000 settlement. My insurance company paid $95,000 and the General Contractor's insurance company paid the balance. My team's legal fees amounted to $120,000 to get to this point. The owner's legal expenses were probably twice that amount, since their attorneys are renowned for running up costs. And they had the justification that they were pursuing two defendants. My cost, the amount of my deductible, was $15,000 of those legal fees.

The math is pretty telling. These were the amounts paid or received by each party:

• $15,000 - Architect (my time spent on this was hundreds of hours)
• $200,000 - Architect's Insurance Company
• $140,000 - Owner spent to correct the problem $300,000 less $160,000 settlement.
• $240,000 - Owner paid to their attorney (perhaps insurance paid a portion).
• $65,000 - Contractor's part of the settlement.
• $75,000 - Contractor's legal fees (guesstimate).

The total expenditure by all parties was $735,000. Of which, attorneys received at least $435,000. And the problem could have been fixed for $25,000. This doesn't make any sense unless you remember that this is poker, not logic.

Without Professional Liability Insurance I might have paid around $200,000. This would have been disastrous. I probably have paid $200,000 for Prof Liab Ins premiums over 30 years, but that was easier to handle than the big hit.

So here is my opinion. Get Prof Liab Ins with the lowest coverage that will work for your situation. Many clients dictate the amount of coverage. $250,000 is probably the smallest amount you will find offered. $1,000,000 is the most you are likely to need unless you do very large projects. Once you have a policy you can usually increase the limits with very little hassle. The cost of the policy depends on the size and quantity of projects that you design per year, whether your consultants carry insurance, and number of employees among numerous other minor factors.

I used to keep my deductible as high as the insurance company would allow (not sure why they would limit this) to keep the premiums low. However, the experience I related above has changed my mind. I would get the lowest deductible offered. I would also see if a 'rider' is available that pays the cost of defense and your deductible is only applied to any settlement. The term I have seen is 'First Dollar Defense'.

To summarize: get Prof Liab Ins; get the smallest limits that work for you; minimize the deductible; add First Dollar Defense. Cross your fingers and hope you never need it.

I have never had a perfect method for setting aside the money we owe consultants. When times are good and cash flow is good - no problem. Other times, you can find yourself in an unexpected hole with no simple way to get out.

About five years after I started my firm, our work completely dried up. We were down to just two of us and a major debt we owed our consultants. Ultimately, I talked to each one and told them of my problem (theirs too). I asked for time and promised to make some small payment every month with the full intention to pay off everything that I owed.

During this time, in order to follow thru, my take-home pay was about $10,000 a year. You want to steer clear of this pitfall. How?

There's always more that you want to do, but let's think evolutionarily(?). Anyway I think the menu is set for now with the blog acting as the HOME page; and what was the home page has become a streamlined ABOUT page. The Prezi Intro had to go. It was a stop-gap that hung around for a year longer than expected. Prezi is a really slick tool, but I find that it takes a lot more planning than you would think to develop a worthwhile graphic. Also, it isn't very mobile-friendly. BTW this graphic is the replacement for the Prezi.

If I have 'streamlined away' something that you depended on, let me know in the comments and I will see what can be done.

PS. I will be on the road for the next week or so, and I will be attempting to blog entirely with my tablet. I apologize in advance for any deterioration in our usual high standards.

I have confessed to being “distracted” when it comes to Business Development. My favorite tool for overcoming the distracted-ness is a contact management tool developed by 37signals called Highrise.* The thing I like about Highrise is that with the minimum of effort you can track the development of a relationship with a prospect. I blind copy or forward my emails into the prospect’s page, set tasks for making the next contact or the needed follow-up, and add notes from meetings and phone calls. I end up with a chronology of all my interactions. With just a few minutes a day, which works much better for me than once a week, I am able to keep all my efforts moving forward.

The four main features I use in Highrise are Contacts, Tasks, Cases and Deals.

Contacts: individuals or organizations that you want to manage a relationship with

Tasks: TO-DOs related to contacts or other efforts, say, your website. You can get notified by email or SMS when due.

Cases: this is a way to pull together multiple contacts to make it easier to manage the effort to win a potential project where several people are influencers. Perhaps members of a board or building committee...

Deals: once a project is formed, you can use a Deal to track RFPs, interviews, value of the fee, wins and loses.

Check this all out at their website.

My first experience with NFPA was the Life Safety Code, NFPA 101. Back in the day, the National Building Code was the building code. The Life Safety Code was used as a supplement. I thought that was it. Then we were hired to design a hangar...

It turns out that hangars have the military’s fingerprints all over the governing code, NFPA 409. When we were designing that hangar, the plan examiner insisted on a deluge fire suppression system. The then current version of NFPA 409 said we were under the limits for that very expensive (and unnecessary?) requirement - $500,000 in 1983 dollars. Testing and accidental deluges cost $25,000 each for clean-up and re-charging the system. Ouch!

So we appealed the ruling, and WON! Happy client. Angry code official...

There are always improvements and changes I want to make to Architekwiki. Now that it is spring (finally), some cleaning is in order. First is the quarterly update to the ’Best Of’ page. This was pretty easy this time around. The ’Top 5 Most Viewed - All-Time’ list just reshuffled a bit, no additions or deletions. One of the ’Top 5 Most Viewed - Recently’ was eliminated. It was ’Roof Access Ladder’, which had been in second place. Its link is here if you want to view it. The new addition is ’Typical Drywall Partition Details’ at number 4. See it and the reshuffled rankings here.

Other changes that I’ve made over the past few days:

• Revised the Sign Up page in light of the NEWSletter hiatus.
  
• Renamed the home page ’About’.
  
• Removed Sign Up buttons from every page except ’Sign Up’.
  
• Moved the menu for reaching ’DETAILS’ and ’BLOG’ to the footer menu, since I am now concentrating on just the ’WIKI’ blog.
  
• Abandoned the idea of a ’LISTING OF ARTICLES’ page. Between the ’site search’ in the upper right corner and the blog categories, the listing seemed to offer very little benefit and required too much busy work.

And the one nice improvement: Very rarely have I posted an article without a graphic. That’s just how I want to roll; but I picked up some advice about including text that I have been implementing on the last few posts. I think it is a big improvement in aesthetics so you will be seeing that from now on. (Thank you, TitleFX and Nostalgio for helping out.)

I am working on some additional Spring Cleaning for the coming weeks. So look forward to a continued graphic upgrade, and an updated home (About) page.