FORUM

struction and the Document B141: Standard Form of Agreement between Owner and Architect. In late 1997, the AIA issued revised versions of these two documents, and it will issue updates to other related documents soon, including C141-987: Standard Form of Agreement between Architect and Consultant, the most common basis of agreements between architects and engineers. Pending adoption of the new C141 agreement, engineers should be aware of the principal issues affecting their agreement with the architect. Although some of the revisions to A201 are clearly important, the changes to B141 will affect engineers the most. First, the entire format of B141 has been revised by reducing the document to a brief form with boilerplate terms followed by a series of attachments. The attachments are intended to provide exibility for the architect and owner to prepare a description of the project, including parameters such as budgets. This new format will help dene the engineers scope of services, roles and responsibilities and improve the relationship between the engineer and the architect. For example, the attachment describing the architects services should be used as a checklist when the engineer prepares its own scope of services. One new provision in A201 and B141 is the waiver by the owner and contractor, and the owner and architect, of consequential damages. The change offers signicant protection to the owner and architect from claims by the contractor, such as for delay or other economic damages. Engineers should ensure that agreements with the architect contain the same protection for the consulting engineer. Efcient and affordable dispute resolution is critical, and the new documents stipulate mandatory mediation as a precondition to arbitration. Finally, allocation of design responsibility to the contractor and its subcontractors has become a subject of controversy within the industry. A201 has sought to clarify the issue by providing for incidental design by the contractor of specic systems or components. This is merely reective of industry custom in some parts of the U.S. but is adamantly objected to by some contractors. The designer, i.e., the architect and presumably its consultants, must dene and provide all performance and design criteria for any incidental designs. However, the B141 description of an architects services does not specically assign the architect the responsibility of checking or conrming the contractors submittals for compliance with those performance and design criteria. DAVID BOELZNER JAMES D. HOBBS Wright, Robinson, Osthimer & Tatum Richmond, Va.

PEOPLE SKILLS

The Art of Delegation

s a manager, you may nd that your days are long and hectic and that you often risk being derailed by unexpected developments that demand your attention. Effective delegation is your best time-saving method over the long run. A good system of delegation will give your people enthusiasm and build teamwork. A bad system will give your staff the feeling that you are merely dumping your menial, unpleasant tasks onto others. The difference is the amount of responsibility you assign. When a person receives respon-

sibility for making a contribution to an organization, he or she has an opportunity to increase his or her stature within the organization. Properly handled, delegation will empower staff members, building a more capable team overall. Good delegation requires forethought. As a manager, you need to dene the task you want to delegate and consider how much authority will be required to reach a desired goal. Then consider who will be the delegates. Once you have made your decision, announce the dele-

gates new roles to their team members. Next, you need to train the delegates to perform their new tasks. The process should take into consideration each delegates strengths, weaknesses and personal style. By putting your focus on reaching a specic goal, you allow your delegates exibility in their methods, offering them even more input on how they perform their new duties. Not every delegate will do things the way you would; in some cases, you will nd that they do them better.

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PEOPLE SKILLS
Before beginning training, be sure you choose an appropriate time, when the delegates are not overloaded with other tasks. Although some employees are capable of handling more work than others, it will do you no good to overload them and set them up for a possible failure caused by your lack of foresight. Develop a simple way to track and receive feedback on your delegates performance. Write down the specic goals you are looking for and get input from the delegates about the most appropriate method of feedback. The mutuality of the process will set the tone for the task. The manner you use to notify, train and monitor your delegates will help establish trust between you. The art of delegation is really the art of sharing responsibility and authority. Ideally, both parties will benet from the process. goals, but the employee is the expert on how a particular job needs to be done. Only when the two have shared their experience, expectations and needs will it be possible to establish and meet realistic goals. Delegation involves ve progressive levels of responsibility and authority. As an individual demonstrates more knowledge, ability and value to an organization, he or she moves higher up the following scale: Level 1: Stand by for instruction. Level 2: Look into a task, provide information on possible action and wait for instruction. Level 3: Look into a task, provide information on possible action, recommend specic action and wait for approval. Level 4: Look into a task, take appropriate action and provide frequent and immediate feedback to superiors. Level 5: Look into a task, take appropriate action and provide planned, periodic feedback to the organization. As an employee moves up the ve levels and becomes more competent and sure in his or her own judgment and abilities, he or she becomes more valuable to an organization. But there are risks in the delegation of authority and responsibility. Both parties are vulnerable because they rely on each other to accomplish a given task. One way to reduce the risks inherent in such a situation is to create guidelines for each partys behavior as well as what each one will produce.

Sharing power Authority and responsibility go together, but any confusion between the two can lead to frustration and problems both subtle and blatant. A manager, for example, cannot just tell an employee what to do. Ideally, a manager should ask an employee what has to be done to reach a desired result. The manager is the expert when it comes to identifying

Reaping the rewards Delegation will increase your contribution to your organization because you will be helping others increase their skills and abilities. As a manager, you can use delegation as a means of helping your staff grow both personally and professionally, creating a positive climate in your organization by encouraging creativity and initiative. Keep in mind that allowing your delegates to exercise personal initiative will enhance their respect for themselves and for you. It will also open lines of communication between them and their colleagues as they seek more information about new ways to perform their duties. The end result will be that everyone in your organization will have the feeling of being part of a team. When each employee feels he or she owns a stake in the companys end product, people will start to help one another be more productive and also take more notice when an individual steps out of line. This feeling of ownership and empowerment will make your organization a better place at which to work. David Rohlander President DGR Communications Orange, Calif.

LEGAL ISSUES

The Millennium Bug

M
ost PC users are familiar with computer viruses. These nasty bugs can wreak havoc by erasing information from the hard disk or can be simply annoying, as by preventing one from formatting a oppy disk. Some viruses having really evil sounding names (Terminator, Satan Bug) can, like the Trojan horse,

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LEGAL ISSUES
infect ones computer without warning. Because a virus is essentially a mechanism that causes a computer to malfunction and that often has a ripple effect of complications throughout a system, the Y2K problem, sometimes also called the Millennium Bug, qualies as a virus by some denitions. But unlike most computer viruses, there is no simple antibug program that will prevent the Millennium Bug from causing computer systems to make mistakes, crash or otherwise fail. What exactly is the Millennium Bug? Basically, its an abbreviation. The Millennium Bug was born back in the days when computer memory, measured in kilobytes instead of gigabytes, was relatively expensive. To conserve valuable memory and disk space, programmers decided to use only the last two digits to identify a year whenever a date had to be entered. For example, the year 1998 was abbreviated simply as 98 in computer code. Now what happens when the year 2000 arrives? In computer code, the abbreviation will be 00. Unfortunately, this is also the abbreviation for the year 1900. Faced with the number 00, most programs will read the date as 1900, not as 2000. Weve all heard about this potential error, usually paired with near-hysterical predictions about its possible effects, but why exactly is this a problem? One of the easiest examples has to do with credit cards. Your credit card has an expiration date up to ve years beyond the date it was issued. Some customers have already been issued cards with expiration dates later than 2000. Even now, cash registers around the country are rejecting these cards, which appear to be invalid to computers that have not been upgraded to be able to accept them. Any place a computer identies a transaction or archive by date, there is potential for malfunction. Consider your rms electric bill. When your rst bill arrives, in January 2000, will your electric companys computer register the issuance date as January 1900, and send you a dunning notice warning that your rms payment is now a century past due and should include interest compounded over 100 years plus all applicable late payment penalties? Think of the nancial tangle that would cause. Now imagine the ways in which the Millennium Bug could cause a glitch in your bank account or your companys payroll. A signicant amount of money, effort and worry has already been expended in trying to x the Millennium Bug before it can attack and cause damage to susceptible computer programs and the systems they control, including elevators, climate control devices, alarm systems and telephones, to name just a few. Anything containing a computer chip could be affected on Jan. 1, 2000. Accordingly, companies using such equipment need to examine their systems for possible Millennium Bug problems and prepare for the potential legal consequences that could, and will, result from its various manifestations. Two lawsuits involving the Millennium Bug have already been led. As the year 2000 approaches, the number of lawsuits is expected to escalate. Presumably, the suits will arise over issues such as breach of warranties, product liability, fraud and deceit, violations of consumer protection laws, and violations of nancial and securities disclosure laws and regulations. In addition, numerous disputes and questions are expected to be raised concerning intellectual property. For example, do software licenses permit modication or alteration by the licensee to x the bug or would such modications or alteration violate patent or copyright laws? Companies hiring outside contractors to work on their YK2 problems should be careful in preparing condentiality agreements or risk forfeiting valuable trade secret protection. In summary, the total effect the Millennium Bug will have on business is still unknown but will be felt in the entire business community. All businesses need to examine their potential legal liabilities, including the potential liability of ofcers and directors. Furthermore, every business should carefully review its licenses, warranties and agreements to determine what protection it may have when it comes to recovering the cost of xing the Millennium Bug or recovering damages in a worst-case Y2K scenario. Eric W. Guttag Smith, Brandenburg, Freese & Knochelmann P.L.C. Cincinnati

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COMMUNICATIONS

Enhancing Your Soft Skills

M
ost engineers are attracted to nonlinear, iterative processes with inexact solutions. After all, these represent the most intriguing technical puzzles. But what if the process in question were the process of listening? Would you feel drawn to the challenge, or would you go scrambling for cover? If you would have dived for cover, its time to rethink your attitude toward this particular soft skill. Listening, as the key to effective communication, is your key to success at work, at play and at home. If you are in a leadership role, your communications skills directly determine your effectiveness. Effective communication occurs when each party conveys ideas so they are understood accurately. Although the sender of a message is responsible for sending clear messages, the listener is responsible for making sure those messages are received correctly, which requires more attention, effort and skill than speaking. Heres how to make sure you get the real message: that they can force their success by doing all the talking in a conversation. Actually, the reverse is true. Remember the old Western movies, where two cowboys stand on the street. Draw! yells the villain. You rst! yells the hero. So the villain reaches for his gun and loses. The same applies in communication. The person who waits for the other to make the opening move wins. suffers the equivalent of friction losses, nonlinear equations and uncertainty. If you notice an inconsistency between what you hear and what you observe, you should probe for the real message. Encourage the speaker to tell you more by saying, You seem concerned about this or You seem to disagree. Most people will respond to such indirect queries by telling you more.

Decide to hear the real message You may have to put aside your ego, expectations and prejudices. You may even have to change your attitude about the other person, but greet each conversation as an opportunity to gain valuable data. Some people may be a challenge to listen to, but truly effective leaders are inclusive instead of exclusive. They know that any success is actually a team effort and that the more people you can enlist in that effort, the greater your success is likely to be. Sometimes speakers will believe

Collect data on all channels Most people send a complex mixture of spoken words and other signals. Words often represent only a small fraction of the message being sent. To get the full message, listen with your ears, eyes and heart. Watch the speakers facial expression. Does it support the words being spoken or does it convey a different message? For example, cheerful words and worried eyes may indicate a hidden message of concern. Check the persons body language. Does it appear open or closed, friendly or aggressive? Watch how the person moves while talking. Quick movements may convey anxiety, while slow movements may convey calm. Consider if what you observe supports or contradicts the words you are hearing. Listen to the words that the sender uses. Angry, negative words may convey disagreement or fear. A faster pace may convey excitement, enthusiasm or anxiety. If you know the speaker well, compare the actions you notice with how the person behaves in other situations. The hidden message is often the most important message. Of course, in an ideal world, everyone would say exactly what he or she meant. But in the real world, verbal communication

Tune out distractions When you listen, put everything else aside. That includes other thoughts, objects on your desk and people walking by. A woman once told me, I can tell that my husband isnt listening. Hes thinking about something else, hes ddling with a paper clip, hes watching other people. And I hate it. Listening is a fullbody activity. If you let yourself think about other things, you will miss some of the information being conveyed. Remove the lters Some people pay attention only to ideas that agree with their views and ignore everything else. Accept information with an open mind. If you disagree with what you hear, then explore your reasons for doing so. The other person may be operating from different assumptions, may have had different experiences or may have better data. The other person may even be supporting your viewpoint through new terms. When you listen through lters, you risk being fooled. Some executives insist on receiving only good news, which prevents them from receiving essential warnings. Effective leaders, however, invite criticism,

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COMMUNICATIONS
complaints and concerns because they know that resolving difcult issues improves business. satire. Even if such statements are directed toward others, they show the sender that you can be punitive, which instills caution.

Assist the speaker By helping the speaker express ideas, you make listening easier for yourself. Start by appearing pleasant. When you smile, you convey acceptance to the speaker, which builds trust and makes the speaker feel safe sharing his or her ideas. The speaker will have an easier time expressing ideas and sending information than if you appear serious, upset or grim. Next, act pleasant. Do this by offering encouragement and showing appreciation for the other persons ideas. Your encouragement and appreciation, however, must be genuine. Also, avoid negative statements such as insults, sarcasm, ridicule and

Encourage questions As a listener, you may hear questions that seem dumb. Instead of responding with disdain, treat the speaker with courtesy. Ask questions to nd out if you fully understood the extent, basis or reason for the question. People use questions for a variety of reasons: to gain information, introduce ideas, seek clarication, make suggestions or check understanding. Sometimes, simple questions lead to complex, difcult answers. Savvy leaders encourage questions because they lead to open dialogue.

Finding a new orientation Remember that communication is not just something that distracts you from the real work of engineering. It is the key to creating partnerships based on trust and common gain. Everyone benets from good communication, so as a listener, treat others with courtesy, dignity and respect as they try to convey their thoughts and ideas to you. Effective listening is a complex process requiring an alert, open mind. It works best when you pay complete attention to the message being sent. When you prepare to listen to someone else, you should, in the words of Max Dixon, show up ready to be no place else. Steve Kaye Placentia, Calif.

ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISOR

Regulated Water:
IS IT OR ISNT IT?

ost engineering professionals with clients who build ofce complexes, housing, roads, sewer lines and other infrastructure know that discharging dredged or ll material into wetlands or streams requires a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The bodies of water which the Corps oversees are referred to as waters of the U.S. How can you determine whether your clients project will affect a water of the U.S.? When preparing to construct a water pipeline, widen a bridge or clear land for a business park, how do you tell the difference between a protected body of water and the proverbial hole in the ground?

According to the Corps, waters of the U.S. are dened as all waters that are currently used, have been used in the past or may eventually be used for interstate or foreign commerce. All waters that are subject to the ebb and ow of the tide are also included in the Corpss denition. Other bodies of water under Corps jurisdiction are all interstate waters; all other waters such as lakes, rivers, streams, mudats, sandats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes and natural ponds; tributaries to the above-listed waters; territorial seas; adjacent wetlands, and water that could be used by migratory birds or endangered species. What could a small wetland have to

do with interstate commerce? Good question. Although the ofcial denition cites commerce, which might understandably lead one to think of navigable waters, in practice the definition covers most naturally occurring features that convey or hold water. As difcult as it may be to determine what constitutes jurisdictional waters, it is also important to identify what are not dened as waters of the U.S. Roughly speaking, articial bodies of water created on otherwise dry land are not regulated by the Corps. For example, irrigated uplands, drainage ditches on otherwise dry land, and articial lakes or ornamental bodies of water such swimming pools

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ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISOR
would not normally be considered protected waters. Water treatment systems, such as lagoons and treatment ponds, also typically are not considered waters of the U.S. There should be no link, however, between the stock tank, ditch or other nonregulated body of water and jurisdictional waters. Any runoff or other connection to a nearby stream or other water of the U.S. might cause the nonregulated body of water to be reclassied. The Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reserve their rights to categorize nonregulated waters as waters of the U.S. if the agencies determine that site-specic conditions warrant the reclassication. To determine whether a particular parcel of land contains a protected water of the U.S., environmental consultants may consult U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps, National Wetland Inventory maps offered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and soil surveys. Aerial photographs of project lands can also prove helpful, especially if maps of the area are out of date, do not reect changes to the topography or simply are not available. Maps and photographs are static, however, and do not reect changes to topography or land usage. Soil surveys, while important, are not sufcient in themselves. Rather, these various tools should be considered a preliminary means of identifying potential problems. There is no substitute for a eld visit by a qualied scientist or other trained professional to conrm the presence or absence of jurisdictional waters. Wetland experts can gather vegetation and other samples, check the accuracy of maps and photographs and look for evidence of protected waters during dry seasons.

Drawing boundaries If you nd that your project site contains or will affect a jurisdictional water, the next step is to identify the boundary of that water. Though many laymen could determine the boundaries of large rivers, lakes and ponds, most of us might have trouble nding a clear line between uplands and wetlands or bogs or the boundary of an ephemeral streambed when the water has evaporated in the summer or remains underground. The regulatory community, including the Corps, typically looks for the ordinary high water mark to determine a waters boundary. As dened by the Corps and the EPA, the ordinary high water mark is characterized by at least one of the following: A clear natural line on the bank; Shelving of soil; Changes in the character of soil; Destruction of terrestrial vegetation; The presence of litter and debris. Jurisdictional limits generally start where drainage features begin: at the ow line or where a channel begins to dip down. This boundary may be easy or difcult to identify, depending on the region where you live. In the southwestern U.S., for example, you may need to determine the limits of a dry wash that carries ows only after a substantial rain. In the arid Southwest, an environmental scientist would look for a scour line and evidence of vegetative destruction to determine the ordinary high-water mark. In the western U.S., particularly in California, you might encounter shallow, periodically ooded meadows called vernal pools. This particular type of wetland remains wet in the winter and spring, after which it may dry out and disappear during the hot summer months. Wetland boundaries are often notoriously difcult to pin down. Often serving as transitional bodies be-

tween upland areas and other aquatic environments, wetlands by denition straddle the border between land and water. Environmental professionals must carefully examine vegetation, soils and hydrology to delineate a wetland.

The need for protection By focusing on the often nitpicky issue of what does or does not constitute a protected water of the U.S., it is easy to forget why we protect these waters. Why go to such trouble over a tiny stream or a pool thats often bone dry? The answer is that swamps, streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands all perform valuable functions that make protecting them worthwhile. Anyone who has lived near a stream will have seen the many species that drink its water. Unseen by many, however, are the multitude of other creatures, including insects, reptiles, amphibians and even migratory birds, that depend on the water for habitat, food and reproduction and even the continued survival of their species. In addition to offering natural beauty and recreational opportunities, jurisdictional waters protect us from oods, recharge valuable groundwater aquifers, and lter pollutants from our sources of drinking water. Wetlands in particular protect shorelines from wind and wave erosion. What were once viewed as dangerous breeding grounds for disease and pestilence are now understood as irreplaceable natural resources that keep our environment livable. Peter D. McKone Certied Wildlife Biologist Carter & Burgess Inc. Fort Worth, Tex.
Douglas Hollinger Carter & Burgess Inc. Fort Worth, Tex.

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MANAGEMENT DIGEST
THE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR
Independent contracting has emerged as a respectable professional undertaking and is no longer a euphemism for less-than-full-time employment between jobs. Independent contracting is a useful tool that can help a professional engineering organization balance staff and workload. For the working professional, it can expand career opportunities and actually improve employment security. Managing a consulting engineering company is an artful balance of matching a staffs capacity and capability to workload. Independent contracting can aid this balance, offering surge capacity and additional capability when needed. In the perfect virtual consulting company, you would pay for what you needed only when you needed it, drawing from a pool of available talent, or human intellectual capital, to meet customers demands. While independent contracting cannot create this perfect world, it can help dampen swings in stafng needs. The growth of independent contracting has been driven in part by the different demands of new entrants into the workforce as well as by experienced professionals who want more options for balancing work with other aspects of life. The practice is applicable to government, industry, education and academia, but most especially in private practice. An engineering companys assets walk out the door every night. Managers hope that most come back the next morning. Independent contracting is one way to keep them on the payroll even if they dont show up the next morning. It is a way to keep them working with you even if they dont always work for you. Engineering consulting depends on hours sold, so staff must be increased for owners to increase their nancial returns. That means hiring more bodies. More bodies means more capacity to do work. But if the workload slackens, not enough staff hours generate revenue, which increases overhead and in turn drives down protability, competitiveness and eventually head count. How many engineers have left a company to open their own practice, starting with a single client, then adding staff as the workload grew? Or perhaps they added no staff and chose to work only for a single company, sometimes their previous employer, but only part-time. The company retains access to the engineers experience, expertise and familiarity with its operations, but carries much lower overhead for the independent contractor (IC). or more companies. Essentially, companies contract now for about 2,000 hours per year per employee. An IC could contract for 500 hours per year from four companies or 600 hours per year from three companies and take an extra few weeks off. Independent contracting differs substantially from simply working part-time. The IC gets a take-or-pay contract for a xed number of hours of work within a specied period, say 500 hours per year. This assures the IC at least a minimum amount of work in the period specied and assures the engineering company that the IC will be available for that work. When the limit of the contract with an IC is reached, the company is obliged to pay more. By not having to pay an IC when the individual is not directly chargeable to a job or contributing value, the company reduces overhead. The cost to the engineering organization is that to get more of the ICs time, it must pay more. The benet is that it pays less than it would to have a full-time professional employee on staff all year, although it must guarantee a minimum volume of work. In a sense, this forces the company management to quantify the value of intellectual capital, the principal asset in every engineering organization. The company is then responsible for seeing that this intellectual capital is properly invested and managed to optimize its return, just as it would with nancial capital.

Pursuing the alternative path I foresee a time when much more of an engineers career could be spent as an IC contracted out to one

Dilbert reprinted by permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

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MANAGEMENT DIGEST
For example, suppose the ctional Professional Engineering Company (PEC) has contracted for 500 hours this year from equally ctional independent contractor Jack Pope, P.E. For the majority of these hours, say 400 or so, PEC has Pope working directly on a project for one of its best customers, known as Industrial Process Inc. PEC then receives a request for proposals from a potential customer that it has pursued unsuccessfully for some time, but which Pope knows well from previous work. PEC then asks Pope to help write the proposal, spending the 100-hour balance of its contract. Because of the urgency of the proposal requirements, these hours are spent in 12- to 14hour days pressing to meet the submittal deadline. When the proposal is complete, Pope has worked 125 hours, all of which he bills to PEC even though as business development for PEC all were non-revenuegenerating hours. Being paid for charging directly to a job or for writing a proposal is the same for an IC. Both efforts are valuable to the organization, and from the ICs perspective both generate revenue. In fact, when viewed from the standpoint of value to the organization, if the task at hand is not worthy of paying an IC to complete it, its probably not worth doing. structure. It would also indicate that administrative policy was more important than nding and using quality staff. In a time when individual choices were more limited, a staff engineer was obliged to accept whatever administrative policy was in place where he or she worked. For a company to be successful in the 21st century, corporate policy cannot restrict access to human intellectual capital any more than it can restrict access to nancial capital. In a knowledge-based environment, the company needs the individual more than the individual needs the company. It follows, then, that the company must work to create an atmosphere that will attract individuals of a caliber that will contribute most to the companys success, with administrative policies that support this goal. In an important shift of perspective, a career is becoming more of what you do and less of where you do it, reecting a change in values regarding long-term versus short-term stays with companies. In interviewing candidates even for long-term assignments, I no longer automatically consider short stints of two years or less with several companies to be negatives. More often than not, they simply reect the recent escalation in market value of the intellectual capital that makes up the practicing professionals tools of the trade. Still, when hiring an independent contractor, a responsible employer is obliged to check references, conrm credentials and do a reasonable background check, just as it would in hiring a full-time employee or a specialty consultant. And if unresolvable problems develop, because the IC is formally on contract, the company can simply allow the contract to expire, risking far less legal exposure than it would with the formal dismissal of a full-time employee. gle companys management to survive in a time of rapid or difcult change. Instead of hoping that the management of only one company has what it takes to survive, an IC can connect with two or more companies. If one company fails or suffers cutbacks, an IC is not completely unemployed. And if the problem of an irascible or difcult supervisor arises at any one of the several companies, an IC also has the option of letting that contract eventually phase out while holding on to the others. Having this option provides an entirely different type of employment security. It also makes any successful IC quickly learn self-marketing and how to quantify the value the IC contributes to the organization. An IC is also exposed to different management styles and theories of business, allowing observation of those practices that are used successfully. For enlightened management, this can be another benet of hiring an IC, just as hiring small, specialty consultants brings unique expertise and perspective.

Amassing intellectual capital Like many changes occurring today, independent contracting increases the choices available to bring knowledge and other intellectual capital into an organization. Professional engineering companies now have more options to add staff capacity and capability. When faced with a new concept in stafng it is no longer acceptable to say, We dont do that here. Talented individuals will simply nd work elsewhere. The company cannot mandate employment policy simply to satisfy an administrative process model. To do so would deprive it of access to a growing sector of the workforce that seeks to work under a different administrative

Corporate Darwinism By working as an independent contractor, an individual professional also hedges a bet on the ability of any sin-

Making it work Part of what makes independent contracting possible is the relative decrease in costs of communication, computing and information transmission, which lowers the barriers and cost of entry into the business. The infrastructure costs of getting started at a basic level have reached a point that makes it attainable by nearly everyone in professional engineering. Portability of retirement plans and a wider array of personal retirement options under self-employment, such as Keogh plans, make independent contracting all the more attractive. This provides the IC greater exibility in pursuing those areas that are truly of interest in developing a wellrounded career. As potential ICs, we must be able to see ourselves as individual practitioners as well as part of a greater whole. Learning how to switch from one kind of team to another, integrate quickly into a team and contribute to

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MANAGEMENT DIGEST
a particular team on a particular assignment is the key to independent contracting for multiple companies, each of which will have different styles. The ICs role may change periodically from team member to team leader, making exibility a critical component of success. Equally importantly, ICs must nurture the ability to listen to the contributions of others, recognizing that the most technically feasible solution is not always the most appropriate solution. Engineers think with a certain linear precision, and this perspective sometimes overshadows the political, social or human aspects of a problem. edge quickly pass into the category of expected, then required. Todays reality is a world where we are responsible for ourselves, but to our team. It is a world where, from this day forward, we must continually make decisions about our future. It is not a world for the tired, the timid or the indecisive. Technical competence, condence, drive and the capacity to organize and manage time then become the hallmarks of successful ICs. This is especially important for engineering companies in hiring or contracting with ICs because the things that make an IC successfulprofessional competence and a basic understanding of the businessare the same things that generally make an individual successful in a consulting practice. So, . . . hired anybody lately? J. PAUL OXER, P.E., M.ASCE Project Director, Global Water Infrastructure Enron Engineering & Construction Co. Houston BID OPENINGA poker game in which the losing hand wins. BIDA wild guess carried out to two decimal places. LOW BIDDERA contractor who is wondering what he left out of his bid. ENGINEERS ESTIMATE The cost of construction in heaven. PROJECT MANAGERThe conductor of an orchestra in which every musician is in a different union. CRITICAL PATH METHOD A management technique for losing your shirt under perfect control. OSHAA protective coating made by half-baking a mixture of ne print, red tape, split hairs and baloney. Usually applied at random with a shotgun. STRIKEAn effort to increase egg production by strangling the chicken. DELAYED PAYMENTA tourniquet applied at the pockets. COMPLETION DATEThe point at which liquidated damages begin. LIQUIDATED DAMAGES A penalty for failing to achieve the impossible. AUDITORPeople who go in after the war is lost and bayonet the wounded. LAWYERPeople who go in after the auditors and strip the bodies.

The price of success Independent contractors enjoy greater freedom and actually greater employment security. Every freedom, however, is coupled with a responsibility. In independent contracting, it is individual responsibility for our own career, conviction and motivation. Doing the things necessary to increase our market value, and thereby our employability, is a personal responsibility. Maintenance of the status quo in an individual professional career or in company management is regressive in a time of aggressive change. Skills once considered leading

GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING DEFINITIONS

CONTRACTORA gambler who never gets to shufe, cut or deal.

20 / JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING / JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1999

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