Sustainable Views and Fabric Structures

Sustainable Views and Fabric Structures
With Sustainable Design as the most important issue in
Architecture today, designers are not only focusing on
environmentally friendly materials but also educating their
clients on the benefits of their design approach, their use
of materials and their method of construction for reaching
"Green" status.

The essential aim of Sustainable Design is to produce
places, products and services in a way that reduces the use
of non-renewable resources, minimizes environmental impact,
and relates people to the natural environment.
Architectural Fabric Structures have been in use since
first introduced by Frei Otto in the early 1960's for
temporary expositions. The major benefits were its minimal
impact on the environment, its ability to enclose large
spaces with little material and, of course, its aesthetic
quality. Essentially, these early structures were fine
examples of Sustainable Design. Over time, these structures
have proven themselves as a permanent building material
having been used in retail malls, airports, and sports
facilities to name a few.

Everyone (Owner, Designer, Consultant, and Contractor) has
an opinion on sustainability and when it comes to fabric
structures one could argue that these view points can be
broken down into three major components: Design, Materials
and Construction.

When it comes to design, it is very important to understand
why one wants to be sustainable. Some times it can be a
philosophical approach from the owner's point of view, it
could be mandated by market segment or there could be
financial implications (banks, energy, etc.). I always like
to say Design takes time and Green Design takes more time.
Make sure your client realizes that too. Current design
benefits of fabric structures directed at clients include:
day lighting which reduces the need for artificial
lighting, UV protection which reduces the risk of skin
cancer, water collection which is then used for irrigating
plants and other services, solar shading which reduces
energy on a building's mechanical system and rarely
considered but a growing trend of incorporating a fabric
structure as an educational tool that teaches people about
UV protection, recyclability, etc.

When it comes to materials and fabric structures, designers
look to the three basic components: the structural members,
the membrane and the perimeter tensioning system. The
structural system is primarily made of steel but aluminum
and wood are being considered more often. These materials
all have many recyclable attributes and can be specified to
be manufactured locally to the site. However, the most
important factor in looking to be more sustainable with the
structural members is in documenting your work. Saying
something is recyclable and having the certified documents
to prove it are two different things. It is hard to go back
to the origins of the material if you intend to go for a
LEED certification or need it for rebates and tax cuts. The
perimeter tensioning system which includes tie downs and
catenaries can be made with webbing belts, ropes of
different compositions or wire rope depending on the load
imposed on the structure. The membrane can come from all
over the world and fabrication shops varying depending on
the material chosen. Some materials have short life spans
while others are made of recyclable materials. You can also
find materials with 20 to 30 years life spans and are more
environmentally friendly than ever before. The same can be
said for the membrane as it is for the structural members;
document your work and certify its origins. More research
needs to be done on the amount of energy required to both
make the material and fabricate the finished membrane. I
think one will find another added benefit to fabric
structures and sustainable design.

Lastly, construction benefits and fabric structures vary
from location, place where components were manufactured and
what is required to install these structures. Most
tensioned fabric structures are designed, engineered and
fabricated by "form finding" which means they are designed
to be not only structurally efficient but manufactured and
installed with little to no waste and energy. Architectural
fabric is considered one of the lightest building materials
and can create the largest building envelope. The result
can have significant impact from plant to site. Less weight
and packed to move, membrane, structural steel and
components can be shipped to site with fewer trucks and
erected with lighter equipment. Properly designed fabric
structures may have little impact on the ground with
smaller concrete foundations for compression loads and the
use of utility cable anchor technology for tension loads.
These efforts can have significant saving when the site is
being used for temporary structures or deployable
structures where reuse is inevitable.

Remember, sustainable design and the use of fabric
structures is most successful when ALL three components are
considered just keep in mind the views of others.

----------------------------------------------------
Samuel J. Armijos, AIA, is Architect and Vice President of
FabriTec Structures, a brand of USA Shade and Fabric
Structures. He is author of Fabric Architecture: Creative
resources for Shade, Signage and Shelter. He resides in
Fairfield, NJ. http://www.fabricarchitect.com

Introduction To Call Center Services

Introduction To Call Center Services
Technology is what makes the world go round today. It is
the factor for the exponential growth of markets,
industries, companies, and products. Technology is what
eases the lives of people, and, ironically, it is also what
causes us considerable pain.

If you have ever broken a TV, a VCR, or if you have
experienced not being able to figure out how to get out of
a certain buggy computer program, then you may have
experienced feeling helpless and at your wits' end. You may
have turned to checking your machine's box for information
on how to fix your mess. What? The instructions are cryptic
too? Oh no!

And then you spot that unassuming little string of numbers
in an unnoticed spot on the box or manual of your gadget.
You've hit pay dirt: you now have the contact number of
your product's customer service help desk. And so to make
the long story short, a nice, patient gentleman or lady
greets you and helps you back into sanity.

This is an average consumer's mundane encounter with
customer service as routed to a call center. While you can
always complain at the office of the service you subscribed
to or the product you bought, let's face it, most of us
would rather stay home and call someone than drive all the
way, only to be frustrated all the more. With calling
customer service, even if you get angry and throw a temper
tantrum, at least no one would see the smoke coming out
your ears.

You may not realize it, but a call center may well be a
cornerstone of your life as a consumer. When you need to
pay your bills, when you need help with the services you
are subscribed to, when your gadgets go haywire, when you
make a call with a plea for someone to assist you, you are
actually accessing a call center.

Call center agents make your life easier by helping you
through your technical and service messes, but they do so
much more aside from that. Beyond the technical support,
the help or complaints desk, the billing service, call
centers play a more important role in the dynamics of
consumer satisfaction, and even sales, beyond what you can
imagine. Call centers actually have several other services
that encompass all consumer needs that the world's
industries have been able to identify so far. This chapter
will help you get familiar with the basics of call centers,
the types of call centers, and other rudiments that will
answer the question "What".

So join us, as we take you through the world of the call
center, contact center, virtual call center, and its
variations.

----------------------------------------------------
Get Your full step by step call center ebook at
http://www.steptocallcenter.com

Window cleaning water fed pole pump box

Window cleaning water fed pole pump box
Housing your water fed pole pump in your vehicle and the
advantages of a pump box.

Your water pump is a very important part of your window
cleaning system. It is one of the very few moving parts,
and is responsible for getting pure water from your tank in
your van to the window you hope to clean.

There are two methods currently for housing your pump in
your vehicle.

1/ attaching the basic pump to the water tank frame, or
attaching to the side panel of your vehicle.

2/ fitting your pump in a box, and then releasable securing
the box to the water tank frame, or side panel of the van.

The method in 1/ above restricts the removal of the pump
from the vehicle which can be a big disadvantage overnight
in freezing conditions. Much better to be able to take
your pump indoors to prevent damage, and have it ready for
work the next day.

The method 2 above, with a disconnection of two quick
connect pipes, and the disconnection of a battery plug can
be lifted off its mountings in seconds and taken indoors at
nigh very easily, and the pump will be ready for work in
the morning.

So what is involved in setting the pump up in a box like 2/
above? Quite simply the pump is secured inside the box
itself with the use of the 4 screw holes in the pump
housing. Once the pump is secured inside the box then two
simple brackets are fitted to the outside of the box, these
brackets are used to releasable secure the pump box to the
tank frame or the panels on the side of the van. Two
bulkhead connectors are then fitted to the pump box, one
inlet and one outlet a battery plug is also fitted for easy
disconnection and reconnection of the battery. The other
advantage is of course all the pump wiring is kept tidy and
secure inside the protective box, resulting in much less
corrosion of the wiring.

The window cleaner after his day's work can simply
disconnect the inlet and outlet pipes, and disconnect the
battery plug from the outside of the pump box, and take the
whole thing indoors.

Some window cleaning water fed pole supply companies sell
their systems with pumps supplied in boxes as standard, and
some don't. If your supplier is one who doesn't, then it
is an easy job to do yourself.

----------------------------------------------------
Peter Fogwill, owner of Aquatec, and market leaders in
window cleaning water fed pole systems.
For more information on the advantages of the pump box, or
any other window cleaning related questions, Peter can be
contacted by email...
peter@window-tools.com
or through his website
http://www.window-tools.com/

Turn Your Accounting System into a Secret Weapon

Turn Your Accounting System into a Secret Weapon
Want to turn your accounting into a business power tool?
Interesting in making your bookkeeping a true secret weapon
for running a more profitable business? Consider these five
techniques...

Trick #1: Get Granular

When it comes to small business accounting, we're all
tempted to take shortcuts.

Why record sales as they occur if you can just batch up the
bookkeeping until the end of the month or, gulp, quarter.
Why get anal about tracking sales to individual customers
if you can just use dummy "catch-all" customers? And why
get nit-picky and track income by individual products or
services if you can use generic product or service items?

Here's why: Granularity in your accounting provides you
with useful insights into your business.

Granularity about the details and timing, for example,
means you see how revenue ebbs and flows through the days
of the week, the seasons, and even time of day. You easily
see when and what a particular customer buys or doesn't
buy. And you see what products or services are hot.

Get granular, in other words, and you receive hard
actionable insights into your business--such as how to
schedule staff and what products to sell.

Trick #2: Track Trends

Small business accounting systems, like QuickBooks for
example, make it easy for you to compare this week's sales
to sales from the same week last year or to compare your
year-to-date revenue, expense or profit between years.

And this sort of bookkeeping seems boring. But here's the
reality sandwich...

Spotting a trend—increasing sales or decreasing
profits—as soon as it appears allows you to exploit
strengths or work on threats as soon as they become
visible, which is probably months before the trend is
visible to competitors.

And a related point: Tracking trends of course also means
you spot changes in trends early, which almost always an
information windfall. A trend of growth changing to a trend
of decline, for example, often signals cataclysmic trouble
in an industry. And a trend of stability or decline
changing to a trend of growth may portend wonderful new
opportunities.

Trick #3: Categorize Customers and Clients

Your accounting system stores quite a bit of information
about your customers. But considering taking your
information gathering one or two steps further.

For example, I recommend you categorize where your
customers come from in terms of referrals, web site
visitors, direct mail, newspaper advertising, and so on.
You might also be able to categorize customers by size or
some other meaningful-in-your-industry factor.

If you categorize your customers, you can aggregate
financial data by customer categories and gain insight.

For my accounting firm, for example, I track where clients
come from. As a result, I know that a dollar spent on
newspaper advertising produces about a dollar of revenue,
that a dollar spent on yellow pages advertising produces
about two dollars of revenue and that a dollar spent on web
advertising produces about ten dollars of revenue.

Categorizing customers in this way means I'm smarter about
investing in marketing and advertising.

And you can often think of other useful categorizations,
too. For example, categorization lets me know which
category of client produces the most bad debt. And
categorization lets me know the sorts of clients for which
I experience the highest rates of attrition.

Note: Your accounting system absolutely has customer
information fields (customer type, salesperson, class, and
so forth) that you can use for these sorts of
categorizations.

Trick #4: Stick to Simple

Now a quick point: Keep your finances simple enough that
your accounting team can handle the books.

Why mention this point? Because we can all make choices or
play accounting tricks that seem to help cash flow or boost
profits or revenue in the short run. And that's terribly
appealing.

In the long run, however, complexity such as capital
leases, borrowing from personal credit cards (like American
Express) to pay accounts payable, barter accounts, and so
on, may seriously degrade the reliability of our accounting
information. And that's a sure, long-term disaster.

As soon as we lose the reliability of our accounting
information, we've lost the most important navigational
tool we have for mapping out a course of business success.

Trick #5: Keep It Clean

My final suggestion: Make the effort and take the time
required to keep your accounting records clean and up to
date.

And here's a self-test you can use to determine whether or
not you keep the accounting clean: You should be able to
produce a balance sheet with logical meaningful numbers.

The cash and receivables balances should be right to the
penny, for example. If you don't know how much cash you
have in the bank, you're in deep trouble. Obviously.

What's more, you shouldn't see any goofy numbers on your
balance sheet. Any goofy numbers on a balance
sheet—strange loan balances, great gobs of
undeposited funds, negative balances—suggest your
accounting records are dirty.

----------------------------------------------------
Seattle CPA Stephen L. Nelson wrote best-seller QuickBooks
for Dummies and edits the popular
http://www.llcsexplained.com and
http://www.scorporationsexplained.com web sites.

Why Incorporating Online May Make Sense

Why Incorporating Online May Make Sense
In this day and age, incorporating your business online is
a viable option, and definitely an option you should
consider. There are lots of online incorporation services
to choose from, and their services are pretty competitively
priced.

Before you do incorporate online however, there are lots of
decisions that need to be made in advance.

For example, you need to decide on the type of corporation
that best suits your company. In particular this decision
is critical as it will effect how your business is taxed in
the future.

You also need to decide before you start the incorporation
process, the state in which your business is to be
registered in. Will it be your home state for convenience,
or will you take advantage of some of the benefits that
incorporation in states such as Delaware or Nevada provide?

Once these critical decisions have been made (professional
legal and financial advice should always be sought), you
can turn your thoughts to the actual incorporation process.

You could decide to complete the legal forms yourself and
file them with the Secretary of State, or you could place
the process in to the hands of your lawyer.

Alternatively, you could use the services of an online
incorporation company. The online providers will complete
most of the administration for you, but in most cases they
won't provide any legal advice.

Services typically offered by these online companies
include:

- checking of the legal forms

- provision of registered agents in the state you choose to
incorporate your business in

- name availability checks

- filing and delivery of the documentation

So what are the benefits of incorporating online?

Firstly simplicity! You can complete the process sat at
your computer, with online step by step, screen by screen
guidance and advice.

You can literally complete the process in minutes,
regardless of which state you choose to actually
incorporate in. Simply fill in the online forms and hit
the submit button, and let the online provider do the rest.

Most online incorporation services can handle incorporation
in any state and know exactly what information each
individual state requires. They know how long the process
will take by state, the different incorporation fees that
will be charged and the specific details each state needs.

All of this makes the incorporating process easier for you.

Another obvious benefit of incorporating online is money.
It will usually be less expensive to incorporate online.
Online services should be cheaper than hiring agents or
lawyers to process the documentation and forms for you.
Web forms and the automation the internet provides, saves
on administrative overheads.

If your business is relatively small, and it's structure is
straight forward, incorporating online will most likely be
a viable route for you, and will almost always save you
money.

----------------------------------------------------
Incorporating online is just one of many aspects of the
business incorporation process. To find out more about
what incorporating your company entails, visit:
http://www.incorporate-my-business.com