october 2020
who needs this?!?!
Did you know? Tricky Trivia What is the name of Snow White’s seven Dwarfs? Answer sneezy, doc, grumpy, dopey, bashful, happy & sleepy
Did you know – there are at least 6 people in the world who look exactly like you. There’s a 9% chance that you’ll meet one of them in your lifetime by: cindy poole
CURRENT JOB OPENINGS: Account Manager – Albuquerque Account Manager – Little Rock Factory Service Team – Central Texas (Austin or San Antonio) Warehouse Associates – Carrollton
Link-Seal® (GPT) has appointed HMC’s LouisianaGroup exclusive representative for Louisiana. And ArkansasGroup for Arkansas. Hugh Cunningham supports the Water, Wastewater, Electrical, HVAC, and Plumbing markets in these regions. LINK-SEAL® modular seals are considered to be the premier method for permanently sealing pipes of any size passing through walls, floors and ceilings. In fact, any cylindrical object may be quickly, easily and permanently sealed against the entry of water, soil or backfill material.
motivational quotes submitted by dianna bryant
by Bud Wilkinson, Head football coach at OU 1947 – 1963
“Morale and attitude are the fundamentals to success”
“The quality of your play never counts as much as the quality of your effort” “Confidence is the invisible cement that binds a team together” by Nick Saban, Head football coach at Alabama 2007 – present
“Success doesn’t come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence” “What happened yesterday is history. What happens tomorrow is a mystery. What we do today makes a difference – the precious present moment”
“We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish; we’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it” by Bear Bryant (unfortunately, no relation to Dianna), Head football coach at Alabama 1958 – 1982 “If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – never quit, you’ll be
a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.”
“Never be too proud to get down on your knees and pray” “There’s a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success” “Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you attain it, set another goal and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit”
Tales from the
Outdoors
by Pat Armstrong
Once upon a time, in a land not far away…kids used to do hard work for pay. They would sweat and toil to make the money for the things they wanted, but their parents couldn’t afford to buy for them. I’ll venture a guess and say that 90% of the people reading this article had or did small jobs growing up for this exact reason. Being (relatively) financially independent at a young age boosts confidence in one’s self and teaches responsibility as well as develops skills used the rest of your life. My brother and I were kings of this growing up. At ages 11 and 13 respectively, my brother and I would take odd jobs all of the time. In fact, our dad made us start buying our own tools as soon as we could because he was tired of us breaking or losing his tools. So we did! We bought used lawn equipment and cut yards. I remember taking this one tree job one summer. The customer was a neighbor of ours and wanted a 15-20’ tree dropped, cut up, and stump cut out. Of course, me being the salesman I am, said, “Sure, you bet, we can do it!” and we did. We dropped the tree, limbed it, cut it up, cleaned up, and then started on this stump. We dug and cut, then dug and cut, and dug some more and cut some more…one of the hardest stumps I’ve ever tried to remove. This job literally took us two weeks to do. We had the tree down, cut up and on the curb in a day, but the stump took us another 13 days. It took nearly every type of cutting instrument we could get our hands on. On multiple occasions, we considered trying to get some dynamite! Life lesson: Keep working and try a different tool if the one you’re using isn’t getting the job done. Don’t give up, it builds character! Another time, our neighbor across the street asked us to paint his house, exterior only. His method of payment was a slightly used Commodore 64 computer. The year was 1985 or 6 and we jumped on that job like spider monkeys. I mean to be one of the few kids in school to have a COMPUTER was like being prom king all year! Talk about being one of the ‘cool kids’… we were!
This reminds me of that show with Mike Rowe – Dirty Jobs. One of the dirtiest jobs I’ve ever been on, in my life, was a whole house carpet removal and ceramic tile install job. The house was over off of Lovers Lane in Dallas and the home owner loved cats…and I mean loved cats. Of the 800 square feet or so of carpet, almost all of it was a litter box, solids and liquids, soaked thru. It was really bad. We had to move the entire house full of furniture out on to the front lawn on one side of the yard, then remove all the carpet and pad and put it on the other side of the yard to drain. Then we had to mop, and mop, and mop. Four times we mopped that house before we could start the tile job. Although we gagged often, and had to burn all of our clothes, we got it done and the customer was happy.
Recently, a friend lamented about having to work in Houston. (I get it, tons of business there, but tons of traffic there too!) My comment to him was, “It builds character!” That’s what all the ‘old timers’ used to tell me about hard work, that “it builds character,” and it really is true. Doing a job that you know is going to suck or getting on a job and it turning out to suck, but you keep going because you’ve already made a commitment, that’s the type of character that hard work builds. With a work ethic like that, you may not be rich, but you’ll most likely never be hungry! Keep up all the hard work fellow readers, It Builds Character!!! -Pat
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TO YOU! OCTOBER
Cassie Murray Adrian Ollie Clint Grose Aaron May Cynthia Henderson Robert Black Dianna Bryant Chris Gonzalez Gary Dyke Peter Eddinger Pat Armstrong D’Lissa Cunningham
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Manager’s Update Shannon Highsmith - Accounting Wow! What a year this has been so far! 2020 has definitely been a year that will show up in history books. We are approaching the end of this crazy year and I think that a lot of people might be glad to see it in the rear-view mirror. I hope, though, that as we look back on this whirlwind 12 months we see some positive and inspiring things too. I know that I have been so consistently impressed with the grit, talent and kindness shown by all the amazing people with whom I work. The impact of COVID-19 on our world has been immense and the HMC team has had to make some adjustments because of it that would have been unimaginable a year ago. Through it all, I have been so impressed with how well our associates have adapted – wearing masks, working from home, splitting the Beehive, and giving up all of the social activities to which we were all accustomed to and loved so much. I never could have imagined how much time we would spend just tracking the impact of this virus on our associates. Can you believe that at one point, our warehouse team was down to just two people?! The teamwork and dedication showed by our associates, during that time, was truly inspiring! I am also so thankful for all the hard work Kenitha and Gary put in to make sure that our associates who had to miss work due to this terrible illness were properly paid. There was a whole sea of red tape to navigate and they didn’t miss a beat. COVID-19 has also had a huge impact on the economy due to massive shut-downs in the spring. Fortunately, the current recession has mostly spared the construction industry in Texas and the impact on HMC’s revenues has been fairly small, with our year-to-date revenues down less than 2% compared to 2019. While our teams are having to make-do with Zoom meetings, phone calls and lunch deliveries, there is a silver lining to our forced isolation. Sales expenses, such as fuel, meals and entertainment are down by over 50% versus last year. Here is another thing to be happy about. In September, we went through our annual open enrollment for medical benefits. Due to multiple factors, our carrier was forced to increase our rates by 15%. I know that doesn’t sound like good news, but yet again a challenging situation put a spotlight on what our company stands for. Jim and David knew that this is not a good time for our associates to be saddled with more expenses and they decided that HMC would absorb 100% of the rate increase! This was such a generous action for them to take, but they know that the success of our organization is based on our incredible associates and wanted to take this opportunity to show their support. We also have great things approaching! In just a few months, we will be using our new ERP, SAP Business One, every day instead of Take Stock, Dynamacs and several other bolted together applications. I know that the implementation process has been more challenging than any of us anticipated, but the closer we get to go-live, the more I look forward to all the great things that SAPB1 will bring. B1 is going to give us access to much more powerful reporting and will introduce some major efficiencies to our processes. Our folks in the field will get access to a customizable, web-based reporting portal that promises to be much more user-friendly than our current option. Not surprisingly, the HMC team is rising to the occasion to make sure that this transition goes through without a hitch. I have seen some incredible teamwork, with leaders from all departments working together to tackle Excel spreadsheets that would cover the entire building if you printed them out! I know that there are people in this building who never want to hear the words “item master” ever spoken again.
Many of us will get a sneak peek at the SAP world in November, when we are scheduled to transition from ExpenseWire to Concur to process expense reimbursements. Many thanks to Jessica for her hard work on this transition. I predict that our future Concur users will find it to be easy to use and it is going to give us the ability to analyze our entertainment spending in much more powerful ways. Finally, the best thing that happened to me over the past year was working at HMC! I started at HMC in March, 2019, so I have been here for about a year and a half. Coming here was the best decision I have made in a long time. This is a strong, dynamic organization and I hope that we all appreciate the amount of opportunity we have to grow with this company. I love the people that I have the privilege to work with and I can’t wait for the day that we can all be back together under one roof!
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WATE R H E ATE R S
BY PAUL POHL, PRODUCT MANAGER COMMERCIAL NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT A.O. SMITH
AND ARTHUR SMITH PRODUCT MANAGER SPECIALTY RESIDENTIAL A.O. SMITH
HEAT PUMP TECHNOLOGY TOPS THE LIST OF ENERGY EFFICIENT TRENDS Technology advances in the water heating realm. nergy efficiency has become a priority for an increasing number of builders, contractors and engineers who work on and support green projects. In fact, sustainability and green solutions are becoming more than just a trend as cities and states across the country have implemented government policies to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. Not to mention the private company-directed sustainability initiatives that continue to gain popularity in the commercial space. To align with these efforts and evolving greenhouse gas emission reduction policies, water heating manufacturers have begun to offer heat pump water heaters with advanced
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technology. When it comes to load management, app-based solutions are becoming more common in the residential sector, making it even easier to save energy and track cost savings. While there aren’t any regulatory drivers yet for load management or app-based resources in commercial applications, connectivity has started to gain popularity, as more customers want to see and track the energy used by certain appliances in the buildings they manage.
What’s driving efficiency? Energy and environmental regulations, at the state and local levels, are influencing the adoption of energy-efficient appliances and building resources. When it comes to energy S E P T E M B E R
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efficiency requirements, California’s building codes are some of the most progressive, but regulations are starting to spread across the country. Industry professionals anticipate that most regions of the country will be impacted by stricter building codes and regulations soon, creating an even larger demand for energyefficient technology. Initiatives, such as net-zero buildings, LEED certification and WELL building standards, all contribute to the increasing urgency for energy efficient, smart solutions in all aspects of the building industry. Electrification and decarbonization also play an important role in energy efficiency. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and using electricity as the primary fuel source in buildings and homes cuts down on the carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, more builders are installing smartphone-controlled appliances that help users save energy by optimizing their operation. This technology also gives facility managers and service professionals remote access to monitor and adjust as needed for a more efficient output.
Heat pump technology in water heaters In the world of water heating, heat pump technology is at the forefront of energy efficiency. Heat pump technology is based on the principle that it’s more cost efficient to transfer heat from existing air or water, rather than create it with a fuel source. While there are both air and water source heat pumps, air is more popular and works by drawing in the heat and humidity from the air around the water heater, concentrating the heat and transferring it to the water in the tank. With this type of energy conversion, the savings benefits are substantial. Though heat pump S E P T E M B E R
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A.O. Smith’s mobile app connects homeowners and service professionals with remote monitoring. Photo courtesy of A.O. Smith.
water heaters often come with a higher upfront price tag, they cut operating costs by more than half, compared to a standard electric water heater. Aside from significantly higher efficiency, there are two key differences between heat pump water heaters and standard electric water heaters. Heat pump water heaters will produce a non-acidic condensate during normal operation that must be drained. Since heat pump water heaters transfer heat from the air, they also need adequate air flow. This can be accomplished by installing the unit in a larger space (greater than 700 cubic feet) or providing additional air exchange through ducting or louvers to connect to an adjacent space.
Making it easy with apps Water heater manufacturers take things one step further by creating apps that provide enhanced connectivity. For example, A. O. Smith’s mobile app is available for homeowners and service professionals. It provides personalized recommendations to help professionals identify the best option for their customer based on their individual W W W . S U P P L Y H T . C O M
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needs. It also allows them to stay connected to the water heaters they install to provide remote monitoring and adjust temperatures and settings based on their customers’ needs and preferences. Specific temperatures and operating modes can be set from a smart phone. Customers of utilities with time-of-use rates can further reduce their utility bill by having a heat pump water heater operate when electricity is least expensive. Utilities can benefit from apps like this too with new demand response capabilities. Once the homeowner opts into the utility demand response program, the water heater can respond to schedules based on electricity prices or signals sent directly from the utility, allowing the water heater to be used as a grid asset and also helping to reduce utility bills.
The future of energy efficiency Manufacturers continue to introduce more efficient options to the water heating industry, often relying on connectivity and IoT technology to make the product applicable in a variety of settings. A. O. Smith is working with utility companies across the country to establish incentive programs to help offset the upfront costs of heat pump water heating systems and make it easier for customers to choose ecofriendly options. As our world moves toward more energy efficient choices, the water heating industry can help lead the way with research, customized solutions and support for building professionals. With heat pump water heaters, professionals can offer an option that is not only innovative and reliable, but one that also represents the future of energy efficiency for water heating.
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newsletter committee halloween photos
dianna bryant
pat armstrong
michelle mitchell
cynthia henderson
jonathan bunch
cindy poole
shannon highsmith
by: Elaine Self by: Pat Armstrong
Can you figure out who the subject is this month? It’s basically like ‘20 Questions’ and you, the reader, has to guess who the subject is. Here’s how the process worked. I listed all the employees on an Excel spreadsheet and then had Excel assign each one a random 5 digit number. I excluded myself obviously. Last month’s subject (revealed at the end of this article) was asked to select a totally random 5 digit number and the person whose number matched closest was chosen as the subject. I reached out to said person and under the cloak of secrecy and asked him or her 20 questions. Can you guess who it is? Their identity will be revealed in next month’s Guess Who Article. So here we go:
How many Teams or Departments have you worked in/on? 3 Name a movie that if you see it on the guide or are flipping thru channels you will always watch? Deliverance What’s your favorite holiday? Labor Day. It’s a freebie holiday with not gifts, parties, sadness, decorations Are you a beach person or mountains person? Mountains If you could pick any style of house to live in, what style would you pick? Barndominium Do you have any pets? No What do you like to do in your spare time? Hobbies? Hunt, fish, boat, motorcycles, camp, everything! Are you married? No What was your favorite toy as a kid? I don’t think I had one Do you root for a particular sports team? If so, which one? No If you didn’t have to work for a living and money was no object, what would you be doing? Doing all my hobbies non-stop If you found yourself in a Zombie Apocalypse, what weapon would you choose? Anything lime green. All Zombie weapons have to be lime green…and look ridiculous Who do you think will win the Presidential Election? Depends on which news network I’m watching at the time. How long have you worked for Cunningham? 20 years What’s your favorite meal? I don’t think I have one What’s your favorite dessert? Not a big dessert person What was your best vacation? Washington DC. Went there as a kid and couldn’t care less, went there as an adult and didn’t want to leave. Too much to see! Ford, GM, or import? I can’t decide (since I have one of each) If you could write in any name in the election and your pick would be made President, what name would you write? My name! How much do you hate wearing a mask all day? Not at all compared to how much I hate not knowing when to where I should wear one.
Last month’s subject was... Michelle Roche
WHAT THE HIVE CAN TEACH BUSINESSES ABOUT
LEADERSHIP, EFFICIENCY,
& GROWTH LESSON #9 - KEEP IT SIMPLE THE WISDOM OF BEES by: Michael O’Malley, Ph.D. Often organizations introduce a level of complexity into their processes and products that inadvertently undermines efficiency and effectiveness. One common way that we over engineer goods and services is by feeling compelled to incorporate the ideas of every conceivable constituency into the final design. A second way to do ourselves in is by building on existing platforms that have inherent limitations, making it hard to do what you want. Finally, we sometimes try to design for the exceptions, rather than create a product or process for the 99 percent of the people. When it comes to the hive, honeybees keep it simple. They get right to the point, concisely, clearly, and without undue complication. There are several aspects of what they do from which we could learn. These will not overcome all potential barriers to simplicity, but keeping the following three maxims in mind will help. First, the information exchange among bees is relevant. They do not communicate any more or less than is necessary. Second, bees have clear standards that regulate their behavior. The standards keep their mission on track and protect against wrongheaded commitments. Third, there is elegance and parsimony to what honeybees do. We can save ourselves a lot of trouble if we keep our feedback on point, our standards clear, and our solutions as simple as possible. More Pollen The best plans often are the simplest, involving clear, direct, and uncomplicated communications and actions. Colonies execute with as little waste in resources, communications, and personal energy as possible. Simplicity is a consequence of knowing what you are talking about, doing, and want. In part, achieving clarity of perspective and direction depends on the use of a common method of analysis to examine problems. A useful simplicity also depends on recognizing when enough is enough. Perhaps the wise, successful businessman Henry David Thoreau was right: “Our life is frittered away be detail…simplify, simplify.”
dear
Dear Dan, With everyone planning to give out their extra toilet paper to trick-or-treaters, what’s the best way to advertise my side business of removing TP from trees? Signed, President, Zero Waste Toilet Paper Company
dan,
Hand out samples rolls of TP that have your company logo and contact information on it.
Dear Dan, What is the best way to get rid of unwanted trick-or-treaters? Signed, Yours Ghouly‌ Hang a Covid Quarantine sign on the front door. Dear Dan, What is the best way to get blood out of a clown suit in time for Halloween? Signed, Asking for a Friend Burn the clown suit to get rid of the evidence. Buy a new one and Scotch Guard it.