Gable End Sheathing in MiTek

Are you aware that the MiTek software will allow you to sheath your gables in the software? Are you using this tool? Consider the value it could provide to your customer if you could provide this as an option on your quote sheet. Here are a few tips to consider about the sheathing feature.

Sheathing is most common in the application where it covers the entire gable face. Yet, there are jobs where this is not necessary. To ensure proper application, you will need to take a few extra steps.

Dimensions for Sheathing Placement

When designing partially sheathed gables where the sheathing is raised from the bottom chord, always add a vertical dimension from the bottom edge of the truss to the bottom of the sheathing. MiTek provides notes on the shop drawings that describe where the sheathing gets applied EXCEPT for this case where the sheathing is held up from the bottom chord.

1. To add the vertical dimensions to the sheathing, you will need to add a horizontal reference line in Versa-Truss to represent the bottom limit of your sheathing.

2. Then use the “add dimension” tool in Versa-Truss to add the vertical dimension.

Doing so will ensure your shop has the proper placement. After all, what is the point of a value-added feature for your client unless it is correct? Take the extra time to ensure your shop personnel can accurately apply the sheathing.

Ask your customer if this is something they want. I think you will be amazed when they say “I didn’t know you could do that!” After all, the application is happening anyway, why not do something to distinguish yourself from the competition?

Remember: It’s the little things that add the value for repeat sales!

Gould Design, Inc. Administration

Designers Wanted

Tags

outsourcing, Professional Development

If you have ever wanted to start your own business and work from home, GDI presents a unique opportunity to do just that. Below, I have co-opted a blog post I wrote last year to provide a sense of what GDI, INC looks for in those we partner with and how to assess yourself to see if you would be a good fit.

GDI, INC is looking for designers who are self-starters, and eager to operate their own business. We have the clients, agreements, and the workflow. You control your schedule, pace, etc. While many are dissuaded by the lack of a “steady” paycheck or a fixed hourly rate, I would present this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. As a contractor, your earning potential will be directly related to your performance.

One thing before I continue. Fundamentally, GDI, INC is about being in business with integrity. We don’t cut corners. We don’t knowingly do things wrong and then send it in regardless. We respond to mistakes with humility, make restitution, and learn from them. We are in business so, yes, we are about making money, but not to the exclusion of our integrity. GDI, INC is a company operated by folks of integrity and so we expect integrity of people that we partner with.

If you are interested in providing us with remote design services, contact me after you finish reading this article.

So, let’s face it, this is the age of the entrepreneur. If you are considering a move to remote truss design work start with this article before making the move.  We are going to look at the essential characteristics to help you succeed and reach your goals:

• Humility
• Effectiveness and Efficiency
• Discipline
• Ownership
• Communication

Humility

Want to succeed at any vocation? Be humble. This goes hand in hand with all the other traits and forms a kind of feedback loop that allows you to gauge where you are, honestly, and where course correction needs to occur.

Humility is a frame of mind which governs how we conduct ourselves, how we respond to criticism, and how we criticize others. It allows us to see our own weakness and then take steps towards growth.

How do you improve humility? One way is to become a beginner at something, where you rely on others to teach you, and where you place yourself in a position to receive criticism. Humility is always hungry to learn.

Some ideas:

• Volunteer with a charity
• Take music lessons
• Take a martial arts class
• Ask your kids to teach you something (huge for them and you!)

Humility and humor share the same root. Being able to laugh at yourself is the key to humility. Don’t be so serious that you can’t see the humor in your foibles. See them, laugh at them, and move on!

Effective and Efficient

These two are so interconnected that I will discuss them together. Tim Ferriss has a useful definition that I’ve adopted. Being effective is doing the right things, being efficient is doing those things right.

To succeed at remote truss design, we need to determine the right things to do, then we need to determine the most efficient ways to accomplish them. Doing the wrong things efficiently does not provide value. It’s still doing the wrong things.

Recently I had the opportunity to shadow my boss as he posted a blog and reviewed his social media content for the business.

He follows a sequence that he does every day, quickly moving from task to task, and he had it wrapped up in a half hour (it was that long cause he was showing me things as he went).

He posted a blog article, wrote notes to connections on LinkedIn, reviewed groups that he manages, added new connections, accepted invitations, shared an article or two that he thought would be useful, all this within a short span of time.

As I reflected on this I thought of how ineffective (not identifying and doing the right things) my social media time was. As distracting as social media can be, he found a way to navigate it through a series of tasks to be performed, completed those tasks, and moved on to the next thing on his plate while staying true to his goal to provide value to others.

That kind of approach is important as a freelancer because you aren’t often paid by the hour, but rather on a job by job basis. A job that I bill out at $200.00 will be that regardless if I spent 2 or 20 hours doing it. Succeeding at remote design then is directly related to being as effective and efficient as possible.

Now, whenever I hear someone complaining about not having enough time I wonder if they really don’t have enough time, or if they are doing the wrong things with their time. If time is a currency, then what you spend it on is more important than how much you have.

How can you become more effective?

• Make a list of your top priorities
• Make a list of things that you do in a day/week/month/year. Determine if those things are aligned with your priorities.
• Ruthlessly deal with the non-priority things that you find yourself doing. Schedule them out of your time, or schedule them in where they don’t interfere with your work (e.g. check social media at lunchtime or at the end of the day, don’t allow that to enter into your work-time).

How can you become more efficient?

• Stay up on developments in your field and the tools you use. Keep educating yourself.
• Find ways to reduce “clicks” of the mouse, or taps on the keyboard. E.g. shortcuts to eliminate using the ribbon and drop down menus.
• Automate as much as you can. E.g. set up a labeling scheme so that you have very minimal manual labeling to do.
• Is there a menu default that doesn’t match up with what you need 99% of the time? Look into settings to change the defaults. Now you only change it for the 1% of the outlier situations.
• Give yourself time limits and goals for completing a job. This can add a sense of urgency and focus on the task at hand. E.g. aim to have a job done by 3 pm so you can spend time with your kids when they get home from school.

 

Discipline

Like we talked about, Freelancing is the dream. You have leeway in setting your schedule, the frequency of work, what work you accept, etc. But, is it the freedom that everyone craves?

Not without discipline. Without discipline, being a freelancer will be torturous. Deadlines won’t be met, money will be tight, everyone at your house will hate you because you are stressed out.

Discipline is that inner voice, yours (I hope!), telling you what to do and then obeying it.

How do you improve your discipline?

• Start the day with a simple goal and follow through with it. E.g. set your alarm and get up when it goes off!
• Continue through the day with goals that you set ahead of yourself and execute.
• Decision fatigue will give way to discipline. Discipline in one area begets discipline in other areas.
• Don’t put it off! Take little steps now!

Ownership

Is it possible to “own” something that you don’t truly own? Absolutely. When you take on the mindset of treating a company or a job as if your own interests are at stake you will enter into an ownership mindset.

Personally, I have been both an employee and an employer. I know what it is like on both sides and so whatever hat I happen to be wearing the “flip side” has informed how I operate.

Whether as an owner, employee, or freelancer it is important to view the success or failure of your employer or clients as your own. Taking ownership means owning the failures and owning the solutions to the problems that you encounter and not putting them off on others.

What does this mindset look like? Here are some examples:

• Bill your client as if you were paying the bill. That changes things, doesn’t it? Adding in padding that shouldn’t be there only hurts your client and could even end your work relationship. Think about how you would respond to an invoice that was higher than expected or reasonable.
• Treat omissions as opportunities. When you realize that you missed something in your work, don’t ignore or hide it. Take it to your client. Say, “Hey, I did this work and in reviewing it later I see I missed X, Y, Z. What can I do to make this right?” They may not be happy, but this would at least give them the opportunity to correct the issues. Ultimately, I think they would respect you more and it would increase rather than detract from your credibility.
• If a project fails don’t blame others. Blame yourself and learn from your mistakes. If someone under you fails, don’t blame them, blame yourself for not giving them the direction they need. Then take it upon yourself to train them up to avoid those mistakes in the future.
• Ownership is all encompassing. It is saying “the buck stops here” even if your title doesn’t say “CEO” or “President”. That doesn’t mean you park in the CEO’s parking spot. If you do, you didn’t get that advice from me!

Let me answer one objection. It would run along the lines of, “But, if I take ownership of mine and other people’s mistakes, I’m going to be sacked” or “I’m going to lose clients!”

If you lose your job because you took responsibility, then the company wasn’t worth working for and you are better off. No. What happens when people take responsibility for mistakes and who work to grow and learn from them all the while creating solutions? They are given more responsibility. What is responsibility? You guessed it: “Ownership”.

Communication

We have had many good blog articles on communication that you can find here and here and here that I will refer you to for review if you want to go into greater depth on this topic. Here are the basics.

It is important to remember that our communication is with people, not robots. People have thoughts, feelings, stresses, and tensions in their life… all of which affect their communication.

Working remotely requires the right balance of communication, but it is better to err on too much to start, and dial it down, rather than not enough.

Here are some ways to improve communication:

• Determine how to communicate on a person by person basis. What method (phone, email, texting, or another messaging tool) and what style (personal, formal, chatty, to the point, etc.).
• Follow up vital information provided over the phone with an email summarizing that information. Get your client to confirm.
• Ask questions. If you think they will make you look stupid, just think about how stupid you will look if you provide a product that is wrong… all because you didn’t ask. Ask questions!

Remember that communication is more about building relationships than just gathering information.

Summary

We hope this gets you thinking about what it will take to succeed at remote truss design or whatever it is you have set as a goal. What thoughts do you have on what it takes to succeed? Let us know in the comments below!

Tim Hoke – Design Manager / Sales – thoke@goulddesigninc.com – 276-492-8020

Gould Design, INC

Continuing Education: A Cost or an Investment?

I was privileged to attend a Virginia Tech continuing education course titled “Introduction to Structural Design of Wood Buildings per the 2015 NDS”. The course instructors included the legendary Frank Woeste P.E. Ph.D., John “Buddy” Showalter P.E., and Joe Loferski Ph.D.

In later blog posts, I’ll touch on some of the topics covered during the three-day course as well as introduce some of the resources that are available to those involved in the building industry for those who may be unfamiliar with them. Today, however, I want to answer the question posed above.

The Cost

For truss design, there aren’t any “truss designer” continuing education requirements from outside governing bodies. This is primarily because responsibility for overall building design doesn’t fall on the truss designer. So, why attend? Isn’t that just a waste of time and money? Wouldn’t it be better to focus on delivering a quality service to our clients? Consider that we incurred direct expenses (the course cost, hotel, food, travel, etc.) Indirectly, the staff at Gould Design, INC. had to cover for me while I was out of the office for three very busy days. In short, one way to look at this course is its cost. Was it worth it?

The answer will differ depending on perspective. A pure accounting perspective would attempt to measure the cost and project a return. However, a return on education is difficult to measure and the return on investment (ROI) may look different depending on the individual.

Investing for the Future

To invest is to enter into a long-term mindset. We have accepted the use of time and other resources now (the cost we talked about earlier) in the hope that the short-term sacrifice will benefit the organization in the future. Education supplies us where we were deficient and equips us for the complex challenges we may face as we apply our new found knowledge and skills in our work.

Not only does the individual who received the education grow, but he or she can then take what they have learned and teach others. This magnifies the impact of that initial investment.

Without this long-term mindset, an organization will stagnate and loses its ability to compete with other companies that are investing in their people.

Fortunately for me, Gould Design Inc. has and will continue to invest in its employees which in turn is an investment for the future growth of GDI, INC.

Tim Hoke – Design Manager / Sales

Gould Design Inc.

Look for more posts regarding this course in the weeks to come!

 

How Solid Is Your Foundation?

In the world in which we live, the foundation upon which something rests determines its sustainability and longevity. The quality of this foundation determines all of the factors that go into the successful utilization of whatever is built on it. A weak foundation means that whatever rests above is merely temporary. A solid foundation ensures something much more permanent. The question becomes: How do we know if our foundation is solid?

In this article, I am going to answer that question by addressing different types of foundations as they relate to the “4 Quadrants” of life.  These quadrants are:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Emotional
4. Spiritual

I am sure many of you already heard of these quadrants and are wondering how I can add anything to your knowledge base. All I ask is that you keep an open mind. For those of you not familiar with these quadrants, you are in for a real treat!

Physical

A physical foundation can be many, many different things. A concrete slab of a house. Earth. A steady, sustainable job. Education. A properly maintained vehicle.

For this article, I am going to focus on the material aspect from a business standpoint. When my husband and I started Gould Design, Inc., we started with the foundation of his skill set and my own. We built a business that was based on the eternal principles of honesty, integrity, open-mindedness, quality and willingness to adapt and innovate. This foundation was very secure because it was unwavering. It had built into itself the necessary tools to dictate its direction. The results have been more than I ever imagined.

Since his retirement from the company, I have been able to maintain this solid foundation just as we implemented it over a decade ago. Why? Because the foundation was unshakeable. It was built the same way it was intended and was quality checked by our peers. There have been times where I have wanted to expand revenue and get into other areas of the construction industry, but have decided not to after some experimentation. I simply was not willing to compromise the foundational principles that I built this company on. Sure the expansion would have been nice, but at what cost? If even one of the founding principles was compromised, the cost was simply too great a price to pay.

Mental

When most folks think of the mental foundation, they think of education. As you can see from the above, I disagree. Education is a physical foundation. What then is a mental foundation?

Simply put, it is optimism. In each and every event in my life, I challenge myself to look for the good in it, no matter how dark, dreary or inconvenient it may be. A successful mental foundation requires me to look for the good. After all, as Earl Nightingale said back in the 50’s “We become what we think about.” Click here to listen to this incredible, perspective shifting recording and here to read a previous article written in detail on this topic.

The fact of the matter is, whether you realize it or not, your positive thoughts radiate energy and influence your health. The people around you sense this energy. Think about it. Have you ever been near someone you did not know that made you feel uncomfortable, even though they were well groomed? Chances are that individual was a pessimist and was radiating negative energy through their thoughts. Do yourself a favor and radiate positive energy. You family, coworkers and everyone you meet will thank you for it. Besides, they deserve that from you, and, more importantly, you deserve it for yourself.

Emotional

The emotional quadrant is quite complex. It begins at birth, and, in the early years of our lives, is controlled by our family. As we mature, we begin to take control of this area of our lives long before we even realize what is happening. As adults, this quadrant controls us and how others see us in life.  How do we get a solid emotional foundation?

If you are married or have children, you already know the answer. If you are not, the answer is simple, yet very complicated: True Love. You see there are all kinds of love. Some people love things, some feelings, some even live thrills or attention. None of these are “true” love. In order for something to be true, it has to be built on honesty and self-sacrifice. It will not always be how you think it should be, nor will it always be pleasant. In fact, you are going to find yourself bonding closest with the person you truly love in the worst of times, not the best.

A solid emotional foundation begins and ends with you bring to the relationship, not what you take from it. So many people today marry for the wrong reasons, and the divorce rate is now hovering around 50%. Sad but true. If a new couple would take the time to get beyond the main issues of money, property or prestige that they would “get” from their prospective spouse, they could have a chance at a solid foundation. My husband and I are complete opposites in just about everything you can think of. This is an excellent foundation for our relationship because we always have to compromise and consider the other person’s point of view. We have to agree to disagree. We have to communicate. What a gift this is, as our love continues to grow ever so much deeper each and every day. It is such a blessing as our 4 children get to watch us live in this sturdy emotional foundation.

Spiritual

I know, I know. You are thinking religion, right? Wrong! Religion is about rituals that foster spirituality. Don’t get me wrong, I am not discounting it at all. We practice our religion each and every day in our home. The fact of the matter is, religion is not spirituality. How many “religious” people do you know that aren’t spiritual? On the same token, how many “spiritual” people do you know that aren’t religious?

What then is a spiritual foundation? Such an easy answer to say, but difficult to understand, and, oftentimes, to carry out. A spiritual foundation is doing G-d’s will as He would have me do. It is making the world a better place than it was before I entered it. This could be as simple as holding open a door for an elderly person or letting someone “in”, in traffic. It could be making donations to the needy or volunteering at your local soup kitchen. There are so many different ways to feed the spiritual side our ourselves. And in so doing, we reduce the time we spend thinking of ourselves, thus leading to true happiness and contentment in life.

When my spiritual foundation is solid, I naturally feed the other 3 quadrants and improve them. I naturally live a principle-centered life and try to help others as often as I can. The spiritual side of life is the one that contains all the gifts that I read about in religious literature, which teaches us that humility is the greatest characteristic a human being can possess. Humility naturally generates gratitude. And gratitude enables me to so many things that I do not have the strength to do. After all, there is only one thing I can truly take with me when I leave this world: my good deeds.

So, dear reader, how solid is your foundation?

In reading this article, I hope I have opened your eyes to just one thing that may help you assess your current foundations. If we are building foundations on things like referenced in the picture above, the sooner we recognize this, the better. After all, our spouses, children, co-workers and fellow inhabitants of the earth are counting on us. I look forward to reading your comments below and learning about your own personal foundations.

Naida Gould – Owner

Gould Design, Inc.

Boston Gable Made Easy

If you are like me you are always looking for different, faster, and more productive ways to work. Here is a method I stumbled upon for quickly inputting the filler webs needed in a Boston gable truss. A Boston gable is a gable truss that has other trusses or conventional framing attached to the side. Instead of the field applied framing to support the sheathing and flashing at the intersection of the sloping plane and the vertical plane (the gable face), the blocking can be installed by the component manufacturer. So, let’s look at a quick way to accomplish this.

First of all, I’ve highlighted my Boston Gable truss below. There you can see that I have two runs of gable trusses tying into it on each side and a plane sloping up to the gable truss in the middle.

When I first input the truss it came in, as I would expect, with the top chord following the profile of the main span. For the first step, I’m going to modify the top chord. From the left end of the truss to the right, I’ll click on the planes in front of the gable truss. Here is the result; I’ve highlighted the modified top chord. This effectively gives me the centerline of the blocking I’ll be installing.

Next, I’ll import the modified truss into engineering and save it outside of the job folder. No need to analyze.

Once it is saved I will go back into Sapphire and modify the truss so that it has the correct top chord.

This client wants us to match the webbing of the truss just behind the Boston gable, then stitch the filler blocks in between the webs. So, after re-importing my Boston Gable truss I use the match webs tool with the adjacent truss.

I save, close out of the truss, then re-open it to lose the “shadow” of the truss I matched. Next, I’ll match webs again, this time I match with the template that I saved outside the job folder. You’ll notice that it messes up your webbing.

Just click undo and it reverts the webs back to where they should be, but the outline of the template remains giving you the profile of the roof planes tying into the face of the gable.

Sometimes the “shadow” of the template makes it hard to place the webs correctly. If needed just put in some reference lines along the top chord of the outline. Save the profile, close, then re-open. Once you go back into versatruss you’re reference lines will still be in place but the outline has been removed so that you can stitch in your filler cleanly. I leave the input setting at center and install all my filler. It comes in as 2×4 and will need to be 2×6, but I will leave that for now.

Next, you will want to change the properties of the “webs” that you have installed so that it is considered “non-structural” and not factored into the loading of the web members. Once this is done you can go through and make the filler pieces 2×6 if needed. If you happen to change to 2×6 first then change the properties of the fillers the filler pieces will all switch back to 2×4. So, change properties then size. Go ahead and analyzed the truss to make sure you’re filler is truly filler and not treated as a structural element of the truss. If you get funky errors chances are you have missed a filler piece. Turn analog on if you have trouble finding it.

Now it’s just a matter of inputting gable studs in above the filler pieces according to my client criteria. Any studs that come in below the filler pieces can be deleted. In this case, there is a 24” diameter Gable vent that I need to account for and I need to make part of the top chord 2×6 for notching in the field.

There you have it. Hope you all find this technique useful. How do you perform the same function? Any tips you can add? Let us know below!

Tim Hoke – Design Manager

Gould Design, Inc.

Setup Lumber Colors in Engineering

At Gould Design, Inc. we are constantly exploring ways to enhance productivity. MiTek Sapphire and 20/20 (the engineering side of the software suite) are jam-packed with features that are often under-utilized or entirely missed by Component Manufacturers.

Today we are going to look at a simple way to enhance productivity in 20/20 in setting up lumber colors for at-a-glance identification of the lumber grade.

With a variety of clients, we receive the settings they use so we can seamlessly design jobs that look just like theirs and conform to their criteria. Some clients have colors already setup, some don’t.

To adjust the color scheme, open engineering and go to setup>manufacturer>materials:

First, I took a snip of my “Material Defaults” so that I could reference the list as I work. I navigated there by selecting: Material List>Truss>Master>Truss members

Note that this list will vary depending on your own inventory.

Each column has the ability to filter, similar to “Search and View” in MiTek Sapphire. You can use these to assist you in finding the material you want to adjust. Below is a sample of some of the lumber we are going to alter, starting with the Hem-fir.

To edit the colors, click on the dropdown in the color column in the row of the appropriate lumber type. In this case, 2×4 HF Stud:

From here it is a matter of continuing to make adjustments based on your lumber and ideal color scheme.

Once completed click “Save”. Then close out of “Materials”. Let’s open a job in engineering and see what we have. In the output display settings, I turned on member labeling to show size, species, and grade so that you can see what we have here. As you get used to designing with the colors you can tell at a glance the species and grade by the color.

Let’s have some fun and make some changes:

I hope you enjoyed this quick look at using a color scheme to increase productivity in 20/20 engineering. What settings do you use to design more effectively? Please leave a comment below.

How to Easily Align Truss Webs in MiTek

Today I’m going to walk us through aligning webs in a series of trusses with differing end conditions on one end. Below is my layout so you can keep track of where I am in the design.

Examining the A series of trusses you’ll notice I did a couple things here. First of all, I made sure the left end of the truss was on the end that remains unchanged throughout the series. This is a nice clean look but it also allows me to use the align webs tool in engineering. If I put the left end on the opposite end then nothing would match up as pictured here:

After examining the layout I chose to engineer A06 first since it has a standard end condition on each end. After playing with the design I settled on Fink webbing. I did this for several reasons.

• It falls within my panel width restrictions.
• It uses less webbing than a Howe arrangement.
• I don’t have to alter my webbing for the FAU space that is centered under the ridge.

Because this is a production job I need to work on optimizing before I use this as a template for the other trusses. Look at how the truss came in by default:

Using the optimization tool I dialed my webbing in to get the most economical webbing pattern I could achieve while not exceeding panel limitations. You’ll notice that all the webbing could come out of (3) 12’ lengths, (1) 16’ length of 2×4. My top chord and bottom chord lengths still aren’t ideal but this client prefers on panel splicing.

For the most part, the rest is a matter of aligning webs and splices for the remaining trusses in the “A” series. Looking at the layout the garage wall juts into the garage before stepping back in. Selecting the align webs tool will match all the webs that it can and aligning webs we see the profile of A06 in the background. All the webs are matched up except for the last panel on the right we add a web down to the bearing. The splices were matched so that everything about A02 is the same as A06 except for the stubbed condition.

We’ll notice that we now have two CLB’s on this shorter truss. As we saw in this GDI post on bracing, we know that we need our webs to be aligned in order to use CLB’s which we have.

A02:

A03 is 2’8” shorter than A02. Everything remains the same except the right end condition. Again we can see the shadow of A06 in the background.

A03:

The only difference between A03 and A04 is the FAU. Here we need to add the load and the stacked BC for the platform, but notice how all the webbing still matches up.

A04:

A05 is the same as A06 except for the FAU. For fun, I’ll show you the difference between the Fink webbed FAU and the Howe.

Here we’ve created a nice uninhabitable room for the FAU and service personal with this Howe truss, but it’s a $142.

A05 Howe:

Now compare with our fink webbed truss coming in at $105 dollars which serve the purpose of providing space for the FAU and service personal, it has an elevated platform that they will attach plywood to in the field. Not to mention the ease of building in the shop. It’s a win-win.

A05 fink:

Since we started with A06 only A07 remains. It is the same as A03 except that it has an overhang on the right end, so I’m going to align webs with A03.

A07:

While this was a very simple gable roof to truss, you can see that by thinking proactively and trying out different web arrangements and optimization on a sample truss, that we were able to design this roof with an effective plan, and an efficient design that satisfies the design requirements while also making life easy on the shop personal when assembling these trusses. The left side doesn’t change at all with only slight changes on the right throughout the series.

What tips or tricks do you have for efficient design? We’d love to see your comments below!

What Does It Take to Succeed at Remote Truss Design?

Have you ever dreamed of working from home? Setting your own schedule? Being your own boss? Let’s face it this is the age of the entrepreneur. If you are considering a move to remote truss design work start with this article before making the move.  We are going to look at the essential characteristics to help you succeed and reach your goals:

• Humility
• Effectiveness and Efficiency
• Discipline
• Ownership
• Communication

Humility

Want to succeed at any vocation? Be humble. This goes hand in hand with all the other traits and forms a kind of feedback loop that allows you to gauge where you are, honestly, and where course correction needs to occur.

Humility is a frame of mind which governs how we conduct ourselves, how we respond to criticism, and how we criticize others. It allows us to see our own weakness and then take steps towards growth.

How do you improve humility? One way is to become a beginner at something, where you rely on others to teach you, and where you place yourself in a position to receive criticism. Humility is always hungry to learn.

Some ideas:

• Volunteer with a charity
• Take music lessons
• Take a martial arts class
• Ask your kids to teach you something (huge for them and you!)

Humility and humor share the same root. Being able to laugh at yourself is the key to humility. Don’t be so serious that you can’t see the humor in your foibles. See them, laugh at them, and move on!

Effective and Efficient

These two are so interconnected that I will discuss them together. Tim Ferriss has a useful definition that I’ve adopted. Being effective is doing the right things, being efficient is doing those things right.

To succeed at remote truss design we need to determine the right things to do, then we need to determine the most efficient ways to accomplish them. Doing the wrong things efficiently provides no value. It’s still doing the wrong things.

Recently I had the opportunity to shadow my boss as he posted a blog and reviewed his social media content for the business.

He follows a sequence that he does every day, quickly moving from task to task, and he had it wrapped up in a half hour (it was that long cause he was showing me things as he went).

He posted a blog article, wrote notes to connections on LinkedIn, reviewed groups that he manages, added new connections, accepted invitations, shared an article or two that he thought would be useful, all this within a short span of time.

As I reflected on this I thought of how ineffective (not identifying and doing the right things) my social media time was. As distracting as social media can be, he found a way to navigate it through a series of tasks to be performed, completed those tasks, and moved on to the next thing on his plate while staying true to his goal to provide value to others.

That kind of approach is important as a freelancer because you aren’t often paid by the hour, but rather on a job by job basis. A job that I bill out at $200.00 will be that regardless if I spent 2 or 20 hours doing it. Succeeding at remote design then is directly related to being as effective and efficient as possible.

Now whenever I hear someone complaining about not having enough time I wonder if they really don’t have enough time, or if they are doing the wrong things with their time. If time is a currency, then what you spend it on is more important than how much you have.

How can you become more effective?

• Make a list of your top priorities
• Make a list of things that you do in a day/week/month/year. Determine if those things are aligned with your priorities.
• Ruthlessly deal with the non-priority things that you find yourself doing. Schedule them out of your time, or schedule them in where they don’t interfere with your work (e.g. check social media at lunchtime or at the end of the day, don’t allow that to enter into your work-time).

How can you become more efficient?

• Stay up on developments in your field and the tools you use. Keep educating yourself.
• Find ways to reduce “clicks” of the mouse, or taps on the keyboard. E.g. shortcuts to eliminate using the ribbon and drop down menus.
• Automate as much as you can. E.g. set up a labeling scheme so that you have very minimal manual labeling to do.
• Is there a menu default that doesn’t match up with what you need 99% of the time? Look into settings to change the defaults. Now you only change it for the 1% of the outlier situations.
• Give yourself time limits and goals for completing a job. This can add a sense of urgency and focus on the task at hand. E.g. aim to have a job done by 3pm so you can spend time with your kids when they get home from school.

 

Discipline

Like we talked about, Freelancing is the dream. You have leeway in setting your schedule, frequency of work, what work you accept, etc. But, is it the freedom that everyone craves?

Not without discipline. Without discipline, being a freelancer will be torturous. Deadlines won’t be met, money will be tight, everyone at your house will hate you because you are stressed out.

Discipline is that inner voice, yours (I hope!), telling you what to do and then obeying it.

How do you improve your discipline?

• Start the day with a simple goal and follow through with it. E.g. set your alarm and get up when it goes off!
• Continue through the day with goals that you set ahead of yourself and execute.
• Decision fatigue will give way to discipline. Discipline in one area begets discipline in other areas.
• Don’t put it off! Take little steps now!

Ownership

Is it possible to “own” something that you don’t truly own? Absolutely. When you take on the mindset of treating a company or a job as if your own interests are at stake you will enter into ownership.

Personally, I have been both an employee and an employer. I know what it is like on both sides and so whatever hat I happen to be wearing the “flip side” has informed how I operate.

Whether as an owner, employee, or freelancer it is important to view the success or failure of your employer or clients as your own. Taking ownership means owning the failures and owning the solutions to the problems that you encounter and not putting them off on others.

What does this mindset look like? Here are some examples:

• Bill your client as if you were paying the bill. That changes things, doesn’t it? Adding in padding that shouldn’t be there only hurts your client and could even end your work relationship. Think about how you would respond to an invoice that was higher than
• Treat omissions as opportunities. When you realize that you missed something in your work, don’t ignore or hide it. Take it to your client. Say, “Hey, I did this work and in reviewing it later I see I missed X, Y, Z. What can I do to make this right?” They may not be happy, but this would at least give them the opportunity to correct the issues. Ultimately, I think they would respect you more and it would increase rather than detract from your credibility.
• If a project fails don’t blame others. Blame yourself and learn from your mistakes. If someone under you fails, don’t blame them, blame yourself for not giving them the direction they need. Then take it upon yourself to train them up to avoid those mistakes in the future.
• Ownership is all encompassing. It is saying “the buck stops here” even if your title doesn’t say “CEO” or “President”. That doesn’t mean you park in the CEO’s parking spot. If you do, you didn’t get that advice from me!

Let me answer one objection. It would run along the lines of, “But, if I take ownership of mine and other people’s mistakes, I’m going to be sacked” or “I’m going to lose clients!”

If you lose your job because you took responsibility, then the company wasn’t worth working for and you are better off. No. What happens when people take responsibility for mistakes and who work to grow and learn from them all the while creating solutions? They are given more responsibility which in reality is “Ownership”.

Communication

We have had many good blog articles on communication that you can find here and here and here that I will refer you to for review if you want to go into greater depth on this topic. Here are the basics.

It is important to remember that our communication is with people, not robots. People have thoughts, feelings, stresses and tensions in their life… all of which affect their communication.

Working remotely requires the right balance of communication, but it is better to err on too much to start, and dial it down, rather than not enough.

Here are some ways to improve communication:

• Determine how to communicate on a person by person basis. What method (phone, email, texting, or another messaging tool) and what style (personal, formal, chatty, to the point, etc.).
• Follow up vital information provided over the phone with an email summarizing that information. Get your client to confirm.
• Ask questions. If you think they will make you look stupid, just think about how stupid you will look if you provide a product that is wrong… all because you didn’t ask. Ask questions!

Remember that communication is more about building relationships than just gathering information.

Summary

We hope this gets you thinking about what it will take to succeed at remote truss design or whatever it is you have set as a goal. What thoughts do you have on what it takes to succeed? Let us know in the comments below!

Tim Hoke – Design Professional

Gould Design, INC

3 Tips to Quickly Increase Productivity

Being productive is very much in “vogue” today in business blogs and there are a ton of articles out there on this subject already. I personally get frustrated when I go to those articles and I am expected to buy something. I want to talk about a few ways that you can quickly increase productivity at no additional cost to yourself, just supply a little effort, which if you are interested in being productive should be a given!

Reduce Mouse Clicks

Shortcuts can be used with almost every program and universal functions typically have the same shortcut, e.g. Ctrl + C is almost always “Copy” and Ctrl + V is almost always “Paste” regardless of the program. If you slow down a bit and hover over a button most programs will tell you if a shortcut is associated with that button. A program’s settings will often allow you to view and even customize shortcuts.

In Gmail I hovered over the “Send” button and I see that “Ctrl + Enter” will send my email.

You can also do a search for “Windows keyboard shortcuts” and you will find many articles on using the default shortcuts already in place that you may not know about. My experience is with PC’s but I’m sure the same options are available for MAC computers.

If you apply this approach to every program you use, you can decrease your mouse clicks in short order.

One further suggestion I would make is that you tailor the shortcuts you learn, use, and customize based on your use of a program.

A designer with GDI, INC has gone so far as to customize the shortcuts within MiTek Sapphire so that they can all be done with his left hand. This leaves his right hand free for the mouse and the number pad. One other function for the left hand is drinking coffee which may be the productivity binder that holds the rest together.

Increase Mouse Speed

Unless you are using a touch screen you can’t eliminate the mouse altogether, but you can increase the speed that it travels.

Adjust your mouse pointer speed to the fastest that you can accurately handle. Obviously, speeding around the screen but missing the mark wouldn’t be productive! You may also enjoy this previous post about using a mouse to increase productivity.

Remove Distractions

This may be one of the toughest. Self-discipline here is essential. Working at a computer offers both the opportunity for incredible productivity but unlike traditional tools, it offers many distractions. If you really want to be productive then saying no to these distractions is a must. Self-awareness is tied in here. For instance, if you know that you are a sucker for clicking on that link that someone sends you in the middle of the day, checking social media, or watching videos on youtube, etc. then use an app like Cold Turkey to block those sites for a set time.

I hope you found these suggestions helpful. Let us know how you plan to increase your productivity today!

Tim Hoke – Design Professional

Top Chord Live Load for Roofs in MiTek – Snow and Construction

 

The Top Chord Live Load (TCLL) that can be used in the design of a roof truss can depend on a number of factors.  There are three ways that the TCLL can be specified – Construction, Snow or combination of Construction and Snow.  Each of these affects the design in different ways.

The type of TCLL you use will be dictated by the part of the country you are designed for and what is specified in the plans.

To back up a bit – a Live load is a temporary or transient load that acts on a building or structural element.  For this discussion we are looking at loads that would be created by people and materials on the roof during construction or snow.

We will look at wind load in another article.

Construction Live Load

You will typically use this for non-snow areas.

 

When you select the Live load as construction – the load duration factors will be set to 1.25 typically.  Some users may elect to make this 1.15.

The duration factor is determined by the length of time that the load will be acting on the structure.  In this case it is figured to be 7 days.

Your loading will show the TCLL as the 20 psf. on the truss drawing.

Snow Live Load

When you are required to design for snow loads there are a number of different factors that can be used in your design.  Again, this information should be indicated on the plans or governed by the building code in your area.

When you select Snow as the Live Load and go to the Snow Tab you have a number of options.

What are these options and how will they affect the load applied to trusses?

Terrain exposure: This deals with the obstructions to wind within 2600 ft. of the structure or 1500 ft. for structures with a mean roof height of 30 ft. or less.

Exposure B – typically suburban areas where buildings of 30 ft. in height surround the building.

Exposure C – Open grassland with scattered obstructions having heights generally less than 30 ft.

Exposure D – Building along the shoreline of water at least one mile across excluding hurricane prone areas.

Roof exposure (Ce): This deals with obstructions right next to the structure.  The factor used will depend on the terrain exposure that is used.

Sheltered – Structures that are tight in among conifers that qualify as obstructions.

Fully Exposed – Roofs exposed on all sides with no shelter afforded by terrain, high structures or trees.

Partially Exposed – All other roofs that do not meet the previous two categories.

Chart below from ASCE 7-10

Thermal Factor (Ct): – This deals with how much heat escapes the space below the trusses and up to the roof to melt the snow.

Ct=1.1 – Structures kept just above freezing.  This will be used for the majority of residential structures.  ASCE states if an R value greater than 25 is used between heated and ventilated space, then a thermal factor of 1.1 should be used.

Ct = 1.2 – Structures kept just below freezing.  This would encompass structures such as barns that are open and unheated.

Ct = 1.3 – Structures intentionally kept below freezing.

Ct = 0.85 – Continuously heated greenhouses to a minimum temperature 50 degrees F.

Ct = 1.0 – All other structures not defined by above factors.

Surface condition: This will determine how easily the snow can slide off the roof and will adjust the loading accordingly.  Your two options are Unobstructed Slippery and All Others.  Slippery roofs would be metal, slate, glass type roofs.

Occupancy Category: These describe the type of building that is being designed and will impact the loading based on the buildings “Importance”.  This will determine the Importance Factor (Is) that is used to determine the loads trusses are designed for.

Category 1:  Low hazard to human life such as agricultural buildings or temporary structures

Category 2:  Those not listed in category I, III, or IV.

Category 3:  Substantial hazard to human life in event of failure such as schools, jails, buildings with public assembly.

Category 4:  Essential facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, national defense facilities.

Building Location:  Most always be left as Other location.

Building Lu:  Distance from the truss to the furthest eave from the truss being designed.  It accounts for snow blowing parallel to the ridge of a hip roof.  It will not have an effect on trusses that do not have a flat top.

How do these factors affect the TCLL?

The way that the Roof Snow is figured based on the ground snow is:

Roof Snow Load = 0.7 * Ground Snow * Importance Factor * Thermal Factor *       Exposure Factor * Slope Factor.

First design: 25 psf Ground Snow, Exposure B, Partially Exposed, Ct=1.1, Occupancy II.

Results in a TCLL of 19.3 psf

Second design:  25 psf Ground Snow, Exposure B, Sheltered, Ct=1.1, Occupancy II.

                Changed the roof exposure to Sheltered.

Results in TCLL of 23.1 psf. due to close proximity of trees.

 

Third design: 25psf Ground Snow, Exposure D, Partially Exposed, Ct=1.1, Occupancy II.

Changed the Terrain exposure to D with roof exposure back to Partially Exposed.

 

Results in 17.3 psf TCLL due to the structure being in flat unobstructed area exposed to wind over water. 

Fourth design: 20psf Ground Snow, Exposure C, Partially Exposed, Ct=1.1, Occupancy II.

                Reduced the ground snow to 20.

This will result in a 16 psf TCLL.

On this last example, the actual Snow Load that would result from the formula above would be 15.4 psf.

A value of 16 psf will be used as a minimum.

This minimum value will vary depending on the code being used.

As you can see there are numerous ways that the TCLL can be entered and affect the design of the truss.  It is important to pay attention to the loading criteria that is indicated on the plans to ensure accurate analysis of the truss for the location the structure is being built.  This is especially true for high ground snow load areas where small changes in the factors can make a noticeable difference in the TCLL that the truss will see.

Hope this has been informative and look forward to hearing from you on this topic.

Check back for some additional posts related to TCLL.  We will look at wind loading and the factors that go into determining the loads acting on trusses due to wind.

Bill Hoover – Design Manager

Gould Design, Inc.

Who Needs Quality? If You Do, How Do You Achieve It?

Quality is priority # 1! To have quality, you have to “Be Proactive”. This is Dr. Covey’s world-famous Habit # 1. To be proactive in the truss industry, you have to also practice Habit # 7 at the same time and “Sharpen the Saw”.

Here at Gould Design, Inc., we have carved the path from Habit # 1 to Habit # 7 by training our design team to be proactive by incorporating a Quality Assurance (QA) mindset into their design process. We also looked at metrics for determining when a Request for Information (RFI) is needed. You can find those articles here and here.

As we delve further into this subject I want to take a stab at answering the question, who needs QA? QA of course is Quality Assurance. It is a measuring process against a specific standard in order to check for errors and omissions, not only from our work, but from the regional preferences and the architectural plans.

What are some things we look for?

• Correct building code in the “Design Info” tab
• Loading
• Wind load case
• Snow load
• Deflection
• Lumber
• Heel heights
• Overhangs
• Cantilever conditions
• Cladding
• Etc.

There are many other things we look at but at the face of it this list seems pretty basic, right? So, obviously QA is just for beginner designers because veteran designers aren’t going to miss this stuff, right? Actually, that is completely and totally wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, even veterans. Sometimes it is the veterans you have to watch more closely. Yes, I really said that. Why? One word: Complacency.

In my field experience, I’ve found that the people that have been injured by their power tools weren’t the new guys; it was the carpenter with 20-30 years under his belt. Why is this? Because they’ve grown too comfortable with the danger and have forgotten the basics of safe practice. The same can happen in truss and panel design.

Here at GDI, we take Habit # 1 seriously and provide Professional Development for our team members, showing them how to build in a QA process into their design. This carries them all the way to Habit # 7. Click here to read a (so far) 20 part article series written by folks that have been through our design orientation.

Additionally, each and every production job our customers send us is then reviewed and QA’d thoroughly by one of our managers, allowing another set of eyes to pass over the project and assure quality.

The takeaway for any component designer, in terms of your own internal QA, is to maintain a sense of healthy fear so that you constantly hone your risk-mitigation processes. Ask yourself, “What am I missing” or “How can I make this better” and look for what you can do. I’ll address that topic further in a later article.

The goal of QA is to find mistakes regardless of who the designer is. The person conducting the QA should not be a novice, but doesn’t necessarily need to be a veteran. I mentioned already that QA is a measuring process against a standard; usually your companies design criteria or SOP, along with the job plans, building codes, etc. A newer designer can continue in his development through QA because he is applying the basics that he is learning to the QA process because most mistakes that occur are basic mistakes.

One impediment to the QA process is EGO. Not the waffle, but that sense of self that can become bloated and unhinged from reality. Whether we find ourselves designing or performing QA we need to keep our ego in check and guard ourselves from the mindset that we can’t make mistakes. Someone with an inflated ego will also resist correction and become unteachable. Remember you are on the same side and working together to deliver a product that is error free and exceeds the expectation of your customers. Keep that ego in check and learn from each other.

In summary, QA is for every designer. No designer is too good and no job too small to avoid this scrutiny. One of the worst things that can occur is on a small, easy job that incurs thousands of dollars of back-charges because it was so easy no one bothered to design or check it properly. Complacency set in and the ego took over.

What are your experiences? What process does your company use for QA? Any bad experiences that made you re-think QA?

Tim Hoke – Design Professional

Gould Design, Inc.

A Freshman at MiTek University

As an instructor at several community colleges, people think I’m fairly smart.  Boy, do I have them fooled!  What I do have is experience helping people through the process of learning.  There are several stages of understanding all of us will go through when we start learning anything new.  The following quote is a gem that came from either my Dad or my grandfather, years upon years ago, when talking about the progression college students go through:

Freshmen: Don’t know what don’t they know

Sophomores: Know what they don’t know

Juniors: Don’t know what they know

Seniors: Know what they know

Did you catch all that?  I didn’t either the first time.  However, I am beginning to relive each stage in exquisite detail now that I am going through professional development with Gould Design, Inc. to become a truss designer.  The professor is now a freshman at MiTek University.

Freshmen: Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

As someone with no true background in construction, it has been humbling to start working in a completely new field.  There are so many things that are unknown to me.  Of course, every profession has its own vocabulary and there are a multitude of new terms to memorize and understand.  Then there are all of the aspects of how houses are put together – let alone how trusses are designed.  One of the GDI team told me several times that, “The truss industry is fun.  Each project is like putting together a puzzle that no one has really seen before.”  As a freshman, I have only seen a few pieces of the puzzle – I don’t even know how many pieces there are!

• What do you mean floors have a container?
• How many different types of hipped roofs are there?
• Load pathways, what are those?

Just like a large puzzle, it can be overwhelming.  So you start in one spot
and work your way out from there.  MiTek University breaks things down into nice, small steps and provides lots of opportunity for practice.

MiTek University has aided not only in learning the software but in seeing a systematic approach to designing a building.  Perhaps the most helpful lesson for a rookie like myself has been to see a house layout completed from the ground up:

• Check your dimensions.
• Check your dimensions again.
• Add basement walls, then beams, then posts

• Add floor container followed by openings and joists/trusses.

• Main floor exterior walls, interior walls, and always (always!) checking your dimensions.

• Ceiling planes, whether simple or fancy, come before roof planes.

• Trusses, trusses, and (sometimes) attic trusses.

There are a lot more pieces of the puzzle which are still “coming soon”; I am still a “freshman” – I don’t know what I don’t know.  But this fact is slowly changing, and that is exciting.

GDI President Christopher Gould shared a quote with us recently: “You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.”

I may be about as new as possible to the truss industry, but it is already abundantly clear that no one ever really knows it all in this line of work.  There are always challenges and ways to improve.  That is why GDI emphasizes continuous Professional Development.  Chances are most people reading this blog are already “juniors” or “seniors” or even “graduates”, but there is always more to learn.  Read some articles or sign up for a workshop.  At the very least you can always go to MiTek University to learn a new trick in the software by going through one of the “New Features” modules.  Go ahead and see what world opens up for you!

Design Trainee – Gould Design, Inc.