When I returned home yesterday I found a set of drawings that had been 
sent express by a CM for a townhouse project from a source that I have 
no clue how they found me. The first thing that I do is open it up and 
ask, "Why me?" I have no clue and have to wait until Monday to start an 
inquiry. Though I got drawings one thing that they did not do is send me 
any specs. Seems about par for the course. They also have way too little 
time to put together a responsive bid. I don't know these folks and my 
next question is, "Why should I care?" Along in there I also whisper, 
"Do they have any idea what they are doing? Who the hell are these 
people? Oh great, just what I need someone else pissed at me."

I set this up as when I receive an inquiry to respond to a potential 
project I go through a list of criteria to determine my direction of 
response: 1) is this project appropriate to resources and capabilities 
that we can bring together with a modest exposure to risk? 2) what 
amount of competition can we anticipate based on the information that we 
have at hand? (Where I am at these days is if there are more than three 
bidders total then I am not too interested and the other bidders had 
better be ones that I respect.) and 3) how long is it going to take to 
put this response together? I also throw in there that if they can get 
someone else to do it then they probably don't really need me. It takes 
an expenditure of time, energy and resources possibly best applied 
elsewhere (playing World of Warcraft, petting the dog, eating) to put 
together a response. When the response gets to us seemingly out of the 
blue the first knee jerk response on my part is a desire to feed it into 
the wood stove. Why anyone would think to send us something without a 
forewarning or at least an inquiry as to if we are interested is beyond 
me. Unfortunate though that the culture of the industry seems to be that 
if some idiot sends out a package, even one not well done or all of the 
required parts, that they already EXPECT a response. So we have a few 
choices... to either not respond at all, to respond in the negative, to 
spend the time to find out what we need to know in order to respond with 
sensitivity, or to sit down today on Saturday morning and begin pumping 
out an estimate that we have absolutely no clue what our chances are.... 
or if we even care.

That all said. My latest upgrade to OnmiPage 16 claims that you can take 
photographs with your camera and have the OCR software transcribe 
letters... like all the notes on the set of drawings... into text. 
Considering that on a modest size set of drawings it can take at least 
an hour to type in all of the activity items into a spreadsheet I am 
intrigued enough to respond to this particular project simply to see if 
the software actually works. Better yet maybe it will turn the long 
General Notes stuff into text. Now, I understand why design 
professionals do not want to issue electronic documents.... lest they 
get changed in a fraudulent manner... but this transcribing of 
information from electronic to paper to electronic is a waste of time. I 
also am always put off when I get a set of drawings on paper that when I 
open them up I realize that I need five copies to distribute to team 
members... including the stone supplier in Canada. All I have is this 
one set. Where the hell do you get a price quote for that kind of marble 
carved before Wednesday? Do I run off to the copy place? I don't think so.

Thnx,
Ken

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