<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Hi Willem                Your formula is a brilliant work plan for helping individual technicians organize and budget their time.  Contractors could use it to build a plan for bringing an institutional customer up to standards within a given time and budget.   It also allows one to organize pianos into various categories for specific service.  Such a design is very useful for viewing options.  Technicians and administrators could see how fairly work and time are being allocated.  There is much to be said for the design you have.        However, what is needed for the Guidelines is a workload formula, not so much a work plan.  The resultant workload figure should remain stable for years barring major changes in an inventory.   It should also help universities understand the importance of, and affect of , things like humidity control, usage,  age, and condition etc. on work load.   The original formula begins with recommended workload, then makes adjustments.  In your formula, we begin with details which only a technician can provide,  then calculate the workload.     Using the old formula, it is possible to get a quick ballpark figure without as much knowledge.  Granted, it will take a technician to do a true complete analysis to get a more accurate figure.   Faculty members do have a general knowledge of age, condition, usage, etc.  I don't think they could work with yours without a technician.          Amending the existing formula preserves credibility while using previous work.  It also saves time, something we don't have a lot of.  I'm glad our nation amends the same constitution instead of constantly writing new ones like unstable countries.          We already have base workloads we agree on.   If we had to agree on things like how often to tune, how much time it should take etc.,  it could be a nightmare.  Administrators think differently.  If we state that tuning takes an hour, supervisors could expect eight tunings per day from us.  I would either die before the end of the week, quit,  or seriously compromise the work.    Though I like what you have done, I don't think it would work as well for the guidelines. -Mike     Wimblees@aol.com wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE>In a message dated 4/30/02 3:34:37 PM Central Daylight Time, jorge1ml@cmich.edu writes:     <blockquote TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Hi Wim,       I'm confused.  Are you saying administrators and/or faculty can just do the math without us or complete the whole formula without us? -Mike</blockquote> I am not sure if he "just" did the math, that he can complete the formula. Part of the problem with the CAUT formula is that it requires knowledge of the age, technical condition, humidity levels, overall quality, age, etc., that an administrator, or even a teacher, probably wouldn't know. What an administrator would know, if the he/she has communicated with the piano tech and/or the piano department, is how many times a piano gets tuned, and perhaps even additional work the piano tech does. (especially in a contract situation). And if the tech has approached the administrator about the funds, even what additional work a piano needs. I am not saying it will be an easy task for an administrator, and a "good one" will automatically leave this to the experts. But if he was given a little help, it is possible. If anything, the numbers will be much easier to understand. They are straight forward. No multipliers, no guessing if a piano gets "light usage, medium usage or heavy us! age." Wim</blockquote> </html>