piano purchase and other...

[Garret E. Traylor]

Fred and all,

Thank you so very much for sharing your insight regarding work on the
"purchasing guidelines".  Seems to me, your work is a very nice
breakthrough.  I see it going a long way to help us further promote the
upgrading of pianos at our schools.  If it is not too much trouble, would
you please forward to me a copy of your spreadsheet or make it available on
the CAUT site for download?

Thanks largely to the inspiration of CAUT, I recently presented a list of
documents to one of our local school systems.   For the purchasing agent, I
put together a presentation folder; and in addition, converted all the
documents to Adobe.pdf and placed them on a CD.  I also created a webpage
for Facility, Staff, and Administrators to reference <
www.highpointpiano.com/gcs >; included was information from CAUT, PTG,
Dampp-Chaser, American Music Conference, and the National Piano Foundation.

Also, I noticed that the "Guidelines for Effective Institutional Piano
Maintenance, revised edition 2003, Final Draft - PDF" currently does not
list any endorsements.  I have, and I know that many others have already
signed on;  but can other tech's still get listed?

For those of you who have not read the guidelines (and signed up to endorse
them) ... visit http://www.ptg.org/caut.php/guidlines_pg.htm to review the final
version.

Because CAUT has done so very much to enhance the quality of my piano in our
community,  I strongly encourage (the rest of) you to sign on and commit
yourself to utilize this valuable resource.

Kindest Regards,

Garret Traylor
garret@highpointpiano.com
http://www.highpointpiano.com/pages/caut.html


-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces@ptg.org]On Behalf Of
Fred Sturm
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:56 PM
To: caut@ptg.org
Subject: piano purchase


Hi all,
	Last fall I posted quite a bit about the problem of piano purchase at a
state institution, and eventually outlined the process I developed based on
feedback from this list and a listserv of music administrators. To
summarize, we named specific models of piano and invited vendors to submit
bids to provide those pianos, also offering them the opportunity to submit
other models they thought were comparable. Decision was advertised to be
based 60% on quality as determined by individual audition, 40% on price.
	We evaluated each individual piano offered, with each member of a three
member committee going individually to each store and rating each piano on
an evaluation sheet (with numerical ratings). Prices were rated on an equal
scale (quality was compiled on a 0-12 scale, so price ranges were rated
similarly 0 - 12, with $500 increments for small and medium uprights, $750
for large uprights: IOW, $3000 - 3500 = 12; $3501 - 4000 = 11; $4001 - 4500
= 10, etc). The average quality rating was multiplied by 0.6, price rating
by 0.4, and those two numbers added together gave the composite rating for
each instrument (I put together a fairly simple spreadsheet to do the math
and present it to the purchasing department).
	I am happy to report that this went very smoothly. Purchasing was happy,
the vendors were happy, and the committee - well the consensus was that we
accepted the results (even though we disagreed quite a bit on individual
pianos). For those curious, we decided on 3 Yamaha P-22's and a Petrof 131.
A lot of trouble for 4 uprights, but worthwhile over the long haul, I
think, in establishing a process. Next year we'll enter the realm of
grands, and it will start to matter more.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
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caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives