what do you mean dirt. concrete my man . I leave the rusty steel for you spanner swingers....LOL

I got a E-mail from adesk saying I qualify for civil -3d upgrade. and will recieve it in a max of 4 weeks. This must be a first for me after being on subscription for more than a year. An email from adesk. I am still totally overwhelmed....LOL

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Frans X LIebenberg
Structural Engineer
Cape Town, South Africa

Dirt Engineers? Is all you got? Bring it, man! A quote from your buddy GW, who is about to LOSE!.. ... :

Very interested in your opinion on Civil3d, Frans,

OK you two.. get your own thread...

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Sean,
Back to your topic before it got hijacked and diluted: if you form a partnership of design consultants, consider having NOBODY on salary. Make everyone depend on billing to get paid. Marketing and such is also an hourly paid (as required) job. Nobody automatically gets paid just because they work there or are partners. At the end of the year if there are any retained earnings, the partners can decide how much to distribute and how much to keep as working capital.

Been there.................etc.

Best of luck,
Tom

Interesting idea Tom. Thanks...

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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To expand on Tom's concept... Each partner leaves behind a small percentage of thier share of billing for the capital growth of the partnership.

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Ron
http://www.arken.net Engineering and Design
http://www.arkenstudios.com Professional Photography

Of course. All billing to the customer is through the company at rates agreed to in the contract. The worker-bee is paid un-burdened rates. The difference is what pays for insurance, overhead, benefits, etc. The burden rate also needs to allow for profit and contingencies.

The biggest problem is being able to get contracts at a suitable rate. Another problem is getting the worker-bees to be patient and wait for the end-of-year profits to accrue. (Sometimes they don't accrue).

If the company (it should be incorporated, by the way) is set up to allow (require) everybody to work from home, the overhead rates can be really low. Some customers prefer to work with a company that actually has an office, even if not everybody is there all the time.

Just some thoughts.

Tom

We do need an office as we need to be reachable. We also need a place to build the equipment and a place to bring customers to show them we are not a fly by night operation.

The machines we build are $200,000-800,000 machines. People do not want to see them being built in a garage.

It will be an LLC (looks to be the best for us). The current plan is I own 80% and 2 others share a 10% state. I get a tripple vote so I make all the decisions.

I still think your idea of billing = salary is a good one however.

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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My brother is a Lawyer ( no jokes please ) - he is required to bill a certain number of hours. He is also "required" to do a certain amount of "sales" type work - at presentations at professional meetings etc.

Billable hours are great - but some one has to do the sales legwork which is tough to bill.

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Nick Hahn
Lornic Design

Specializing in pork harvesting equipment.

"The Standard Deviation of the Sampling Distribution of the Sample Mean ! " ( My wife's favorite statistics phrase! )

Very true. My model is to get enough relationships with vendors that they do most of my selling for me.

For example there is a pharmaceutical conveyor company moving from Penn to near this area. We build machines for the pharm industry as well (vial loaders and unscramblers etc..) So I tell them if they find me a custom application while out selling their conveyors I'll pay them the commission (a few thousand dollars) plus I'll use their conveyors in the application.

Do this with enough companies and you hardly have to sell.

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Sean,
I had misunderstood your business plan. I had thought that you were starting a design/consulting office, possibly with a loose affiliation of friends and co-workers to provide labor expertise.

Apparently you are starting a manufacturing company. That's a totally different animal. In that kind of office, people are expected to be available full time, so they expect to get paid full time. I'm not sure how to work any other system fairly.

Oh well, back to the drawing boards.

Tom

Sorry for the confusion.

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Make sure you define who your customer is - the system integrator, or the end user. If you are selling on quality / performance its easier to get more $ from the end user. I have found it better to deal directly with the end user - one less place for miscommunication between what they want, and what you can do.

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Nick Hahn
Lornic Design

Specializing in pork harvesting equipment.

"The Standard Deviation of the Sampling Distribution of the Sample Mean ! " ( My wife's favorite statistics phrase! )

Nick... in most cases we ARE the integrator. A little background

Aidlin, bought by GEBO bought by Sidel (bought by Tetra-Laval) makes custom automation equipment (among other things). They have not supported the custom division for many years. A few of us feel it's viable so we are going to try to do it on our own. So we are the integrator for our own (and other people's equipment).

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Here are some of our brochures (that I just had desigend before the closure ).

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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