When I started doing data preparation years ago, a lot of my friends wanted the “Marco Deal”. What they said it meant, was they would roll out of bed at the crack of 8 in the morning, and put in a leisurely 9 to 5 shift in a converted bedroom in their house.

These were guys that along with me were used to 16-hour days. When I started Takeoff Professionals, I had been spending a fair amount of time in the field, the opportunity to avoid the 3:00 AM concrete pours in Phoenix was a worthwhile goal.

Why am I telling you this? As a contributor to this publication, I can give readers valuable insight into the world of data prep. If you are thinking about doing this work for your company, I can tell you what to expect. If you have been in the game for a time, you can realize you are not alone. Experience has allowed us to draw a road map of processes, and the order in which to do them. Any job has 4 distinct phases that are separate but necessary to a good product. They are Acquisition, Execution, Verification, and Re-work.

Acquisition: If you are going to build the job, you need raw materials. In data, that means electronic files and paper. Paper can mean actual dead trees or our preferred method, scans. It is easier for us to look at paper plans if they are up on one of 2 nice big monitors. If you don't work this way, you are only about 75% as productive as you can be.

Execution: Electronics are a slippery slope, and will get more ink in the future. For now, we get some type of file that can be imported into our program of choice. After initial layer stripping and clean up, the file is ready to be made 3 dimensional.

If the world was a perfect place, we would make the 2D file 3D, and everything would work fine. This is not the case. In order to know where the job is wrong, it is necessary to make it look like the picture, then propose changes.

Verification: All of the over 600 jobs we see each year need some type of fixing. More often than not, it is just a little bit here and there. In order to find out where the sticky spots are, you need to duplicate the plans. At that point, it is possible to propose changes to the engineer, and get approval. In the world of fast track construction, it is customary to provide the field with a rough grade model, pending approval of the questioned areas.

Re-work: Upon final approval from the engineer regarding proposed changes, it is time to institute the first round of changes. These represent the initial detailing of the job precipitated by your review of the file as designed. Often times, the changes are small, and do not require anything more than approval from the engineer, and clouds on the plans to indicate same.

There are times when a job has gone through several iterations before it is released to the contractor, and eventually, you. In this case we usually see areas that may not only need work, but the original intent of the design engineer is hard to visualize. If this is the case, the engineer will take the design process in those areas back a few steps, and walk it to the finish line with a clearer focus.

We find that virtually all jobs need fine tuning, 70% require communication with the designer, and 40% of those need to be re-worked, either by the engineer or us. As an interested party in the quick, accurate, and profitable completion of a job, this is just a cost of business for those involved in data prep.

If you are looking into building data for the company you work for, you now know what to expect. Do not be afraid, but be careful. This industry requires attention to detail, to the point of shutting off the phone for a few hours at a time to pay attention to what needs to be done. It is a slow start, but the learning curve is quick and smooth. If you have been doing this for a while, the outline above should tell you that others share your pain and frustration, and successful data takes more than pressing a few buttons and clicking on some icons.

This is an exciting time in our world, the industry is still young, and we all are learning every day how much more we can do with this technology. Stay tuned my friends; it is going to be a great ride.

 Visit Marco's website at www.TakeoffPros.com