<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">In a message dated 4/22/02 5:51:41 PM Pacific Daylight Time, vem@email.byu.edu writes: Wim wrote: (Major snip) <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">It is by knowing how often a piano should be tuned, and how long it should > take, an administrator will more closely be able to determine how much time, > and money, is needed to maintain the pianos. That is what they want to know. > It is also their right to find someone who can do that work in the prescribed > amount of time. </BLOCKQUOTE> And Vince wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">If you are a contracted tuner, maybe.</BLOCKQUOTE> Vince, I think even the contracted tuner should expect to have a high degree of expertise.  That is one of the things I have been trying to say the last couple years:  the CAUT contract tech is (or should also be) an expert.  The Guidelines and formula should function as a tool for both employed and contracted technicians to provide a school with good information.  We should all be able to knowledgeably provide a school with an assessment of their needs.  This doesn't ignore the reality of the school's budget considerations, but unless we provide our school(s) with our professional judgment (the school's crunched numbers) about their situation we are not really doing our professional duty, and we may also be putting ourselves in a position of vulnerability.   Administrators are, indeed, intelligent people.  Unfortunately, many are not inclined to take piano technicians seriously, assuming the recommendations of the piano professors, or the way things have always been done -- the prevailing wisdom -- is preferable to some technician's study.  That doesn't mean we have to go along.  Either we need to work to better represent the value of our expertise, or, if the school is not interested, we are better to walk away.  That might be easier for a contract tech than someone already employed full-time, but some kind of clarity about where you stand is important.  The school's workload numbers provide an important means of doing this.  Even if we are in a process of revision, those numbers provide an authority derived from the best work of our profession in the area. Bill Shull, RPT La Sierra University </HTML>