Building to Maintaining

Please note that I am in no way an expert in, well, anything. These are just my observations from watching the news and talking with friends in the engineering field. Also, these items do not reflect the opinions of any company I do currently work or have worked for in the past. Also, I am not an economist or an accountant, just an engineer.

When I graduated from college, the economy was already starting to slip. One of the first things to get cut from a lot of bloated corporate budgets was capital (project) spending. A lot of companies changed their policy on project paybacks down to fractions of a year for full payback. This cut down the engineering workload for these companies to where, in some cases, layoffs were necessary. This has resulted in an unrecoverable loss of industry knowledge for many companies.

In the past, engineering has been so tightly bound to project work that this loss of jobs and, as a result, knowledge would always be tied to a decrease in project funding. I don’t know what the experts would say, but to me it seems like the tough times are the WORSE times to lose your experts. A lot of company structures however, are not flexible enough to reallocate this knowledge in times of minimal capital spending.

The reason, in my opinion, that a lot of corporations cannot reallocate their knowledge is simple: for the past half century they have been in a “building” life cycle. When things are good and you are building capacity there is a certain momentum that can carry a company through small dips in revenue. What is different now? A lot…

Customers are smarter now. They are also bigger. The days of selling to small distributors or direct are dead for a lot of companies. If you make widgets, ten other companies do too and they are all trying to get Boxmart’s business, just like you. Oh yeah, and Boxmart has one person, Dr. Widget, dedicated to buying widgets. This person, as a result, is a widget nerd. He will compare your product to everything on the market and pick it apart with an expert eye. This is not the same person who came into the local hardware store and picked the cheapest widget off the shelf. Now you have to convince Dr. Widget that you deserve to even be on his shelf. So, when things are slow, what does this mean for Dr. Widget? It means he has even more time to shop around. In slow times, you need your experts there to refine your widget so Boxmart decides you are the widget that sits on their shelf.

This is not a matter of building capacity (maybe it leads to that) but rather maintaining your product line. A company must look at all its processes and control its quality. It must get better at what it “does” and not dedicate all its time looking at what it “could do”. This is, believe it or not, a new thing for a lot of companies. Bean counters call this type of spending overhead, operating costs, probably a lot other things. I call it “Maintenance”. It is fundamentally different from capital costs, or “Building”. A lot of engineering firms/divisions within these companies are literally set up to be paid out of capital funding only, meaning they are handcuffed when the company might need them the most! A lot of companies are willing to fork over plenty of operating costs even in a tough time like right now. It makes sense to me to roll some of the expertise into this cost group to save a company’s knowledge base!

I am thankful to have been employed by two great companies since graduating. Many of the engineers I know, all quite bright, have not been so lucky. A lot of America’s best are sidelined right now due to an old-school, inflexible engineering/accounting approach. They can get by for a while that way, but pretty soon I fear a company who has embraced a company “maintenance” mentality will have all of Boxmarts shelf space. Hopefully for the sake of our economy and well-being, that company has a “Made in USA” sticker on the bottom of its widgets.

The Hood

Saturday I helped a co-worker move into a new place. I really enjoyed the day as I got to see some new parts of the region. The country outside of Washougal is beautiful, especially up on the hill with jaw dropping views of Mt. Hood. My co-worker moved to a small town in the Northeast Vancouver area, which was really cool too. Being a newbie to the area it was refreshing to get out of town and see the beautiful surrounding area. After moving, we enjoyed steak, brew, and BS which is a combination of quality you would be troubled to surpass.


We went on a small day trip Sunday to Multnomah Falls and Hood River. We met up with our friends Kacy and Jennifer for the hike to the top of the falls. We also were all able to take our dogs, which is always nice. The hike was really pleasant, paved all the way to the top with plenty of switchbacks with some area to stop, turn around, and take in the Columbia River.


A few pics of the falls.

After we finished the hike and got back to the cars, we hit 84 East towards Hood River. By this time, the dogs needed a toilet break so we pulled into the waterfront park on the Columbia. This small park has a really cool swimming beach we will have to try out when the water temperature creeps somewhere above “arctic summer”.

Hood River is a really cool little town, with an interesting layout and great vistas. As enjoyable as the town is to look at, I was there for one reason: Full Sail Brewery. Their pale remains my favorite pale ale, so I was pumped to check the place out. It did not disappoint! We arrived twenty minutes before the tour was supposed to start, plenty of time to go through a sampler tray. The tray was full of treats, but the biggest surprise is their dark lager, Session. This is a fantastic dark lager they are apparently struggling to keep up on production. They aren’t even kegging this beer yet and it is winning medals all over the world. If you get a chance to try this stuff, check it out.

Great Motto!

The tour was very high quality. The tour guide was funny, informative, and very interactive. He covered all the basics and really drew the crowd in. Full Sail is a cool company. The 47 employees mentioned on all of their merchandise represent the 47 employees who bought the company to make it employee owned. They actually have somewhere around 80 employees now and are hiring more in March as they tool up to make more Session. The facility was in tiptop shape, with high quality manual equipment and minimal automation. They still hand craft all of their brew, which is crazy when you see the throughput they require.


The restaurant also exceeded expectations. Everyone enjoyed their meal, and my beer battered halibut sandwich was so good when paired with some of their restaurant exclusive porter my waistline is thankful we do not live closer.


We keep trying new things up here, and the Portland area keeps on delivering. We are lucky to live in a place like this!

Coastal Tidings

Amy and I took a short trip to Newport Oregon this last weekend where we met up with my parents. Our hotel allowed dogs, so we brought Ruger and Riley along with us. This was the first time we had taken dogs with us to a hotel, and as we are weird dog people now, we really enjoyed that. The weather was great, a real rarity for the Oregon coast. With only a few shots of that famous coastal rain and a large share of sunshine, we were able to enjoy quality views of the rugged coast line. The dogs enjoyed the sand and let their humans enjoy some sweet barley nectar.

Speaking of barley nectar, you didn’t think I would go to Newport without visiting one of the world’s top breweries, did you? Well, I didn’t miss this opportunity. We toured the Rogue brewery on Sunday. The tour wasn’t the greatest, pretty quick and dirty, but I guess not everyone in the group was an engineer wanting to climb in to tanks and discuss their material handling. The beer we bought from their store however, was top shelf. My mom bought a Mom hefeweizen, dad bought some John John beer aged in a bourbon barrel, and I had some of their mocha porter as well as some Double Dead Guy Ale. I think I might have succeeded in turning my parents into beer snobs! Well, they have at least passed “Intro to Brew Snobbery”.

Touring Rogue brewery made me think a little bit about engineering philosophy. This brewery was not high tech, using a lot of repurposed equipment and in some cases insulating tanks with non-clad foam. The plant layout appeared to have been given little thought. Despite all of this, they produce some of the finest, award-winningest beer around. This focus on product quality is something I think some of the biggest companies have lost. Product quality is your public face, and regardless of how good you are at making a bad product it is still a bad product. Now, couple this quality with solid manufacturing technique and you really have something.

Another stop on our trip was the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Being the nerd that I am, I was uber-stoked to walk amongst some of the strange creatures of the ocean. This is the closest I will ever get to these animals though. SCUBA is not for me, something that is reinforced with every episode of Shark Week and every visit to an aquarium. You can tell me odds all day for getting attacked/bothered by a sea creature, but I prefer land. Humans swimming was obviously a design afterthought, added at the last minute. Probably at the last human design review someone said “oh, and we should probably give them some way to get back into the boats they will build” with the lead designer saying something along the lines of “web their hands a little bit and call it good”. The best among us, Michael Phelps, would become a nice treat for a fat, full, and lazy shark.

Engineering seems to be integrating more with architecture at a crazy pace. Lately it has been a hot topic here at work. Has anyone else in the field experienced this? BIM, Integrated Project Delivery, AIC, other three letter acronyms. Anyone digging into this stuff? I wonder…

Cycle Oregon 2010

Cycle Oregon Weekend ride location has been announced!

Cycle Oregon Weekend

The routes are shown below:


Looking forward to another great time! Bill, I can help you develop a wine budget if you want; just let me know.