---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment Wim: I don't think anyone could hazard a wild guess as to how long the instruments will last with X amount of maintenance as opposed to Y amount of maintenance. The thing I have tried to communicate is 1> they will last somewhat longer with proper maintenance 2> if the school is pretending to be teaching artistry, there is a certain amount of maintenance that has to be done to keep the instruments suitable for artistic use. I think it wise of the committee to leave out speculation that can't be verified by research data. You'd have to set up two similar schools, buy identical instruments and have a disparate maintenance program to verify how much longer they will last. That's not going to be done. I also try to emphasize that I can take a 15-year-old practice room grand and trade it for $30,000 or rebuild the essentials for $10,000. You don't have to have a Ph.D to understand that. A lot of this can't be documented.....it can only be explained to people who want to understand. Anyone who wants documented proof of this kind of information doesn't really want to understand, and as you said too many don't care about 10 - 20 years down the road. Most in the upper levels of management will be retired by then. dave *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 6/9/2003 at 5:26 PM Wimblees@aol.com wrote: First of all, thank you Fred and Bill for putting together this Guideline. This document will go a long way towards helping universities cope with the piano maintenance problem. In reviewing this plan, there is one thing that I keep looking for. Perhaps it's in there, but I can't find it. What I am looking for is perhaps the same thing university administrators might be looking for, and that is a cost vs longevity ratio. What I mean is, if a university spends x number of dollars on inventory, and spends x number of dollars on a technician to maintain this inventory, how long can the inventory be expected to last? And what would happen to the inventory if the university spends less on maintenance? How much sooner will the inventory need to be replaced? The workload formula tells an administrator how many technicians are needed for the number of pianos the school has. But let's say a school needs 2.5 technicians for its inventory. What will the effect be on that inventory if only 1 full time technician is hired? How much more will it cost them in the long run? I realize this might not be something that can be predicted, but maybe we can give it a shot. The other problem we might run into is a disturbing piece of information I learned last year. Unfortunately, what I found out is that even within the music department, much less the university in general, most professors, and even the chair of the department, don't care what happens 20 or 40 years from now. Most only care about what happens next year. Will they have enough money for their pet project, or scholarships, and will they get the raise they were promised? Most of them would rather spend $10,000 now on scholarships for next year's students, to justify their teaching schedule, than $10,000 for parts for the pianos so they will last another 20 years. So I realize that providing the information I am looking for might not do any good, but I think this is the kind of information a school would need to adequately protect their inventory. Wim **************** END MESSAGE FROM Wimblees@aol.com ********************* _____________________________ David M. Porritt dporritt@mail.smu.edu Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 _____________________________ ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/70/cf/09/fe/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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