If you are the owner of a business, or the potential buyer of a business, you need to know the answers to the following questions: When is the right time to sell? When should I buy? How do I get the company ready to sell? What is a company worth? How do I attract buyers? How do I limit the amount of taxes I have to pay? How do I as new owner become successful after the sale? How do I preserve my good name after the sale? Most professionals only buy or sell a company once in their lifetime. Make sure you understand how the game is played before you make a costly mistake. The cost of this seminar on tape maybe one of the best investments you as a professional can make. Included is a special interview about buying and selling between Milton Denny, PLS and Van Clinklescales, PE, PLS, PhD.

This course is designed for engineers and other professionals who want to know more about the detailed aspects of construction project management. Topics covered include CPM schedule updating, job cost/forecasting, project documentation, change orders and project close out. This course provides just the right blend of theory and practical examples.

Construction projects seldom, if ever, go exactly as planned. The weather turns unexpectedly poor during construction. The wall color is not to the owner's liking and needs to be changed. New technology must be incorporated into the facility during construction. A recently rediscovered cemetery will require rerouting of the planned sewer line. Unforeseen site conditions must be accommodated in constructing the foundation. Plan dimensions don't add up correctly or a structural detail was mistakenly omitted from the final drawings. These few examples are only intended to illustrate the unlimited number of similar "unplanned" occurences that form the basis for contract changes and its accompanying revisions to scope, time, and cost.

This course covers the basics of this challenging aspect of administering construction contracts: the change order. It is designed to show a balanced approach to the change order process and, as such, can benefit you whether you are an owner's representative, designer, or contractor. The focus will be on an unbiased presentation of the process and presentation of generally accepted techniques to use in arriving at a fair and reasonable settlement of time and costs. The development of the material assumes no prior in-depth knowledge in this area. Be sure to have your calculators available to help with problems used to illustrate the methods introduced during the seminar.

This video is designed to show you how to improve your marketing and public relations efforts to increase business. Included is information on how to find and win the jobs that will keep your company growing profitably. It will offer practical "how to" suggestions on organizing the marketing function, writing a marketing plan keeping the marketing effort on track. Also, there is information on writing good proposals and doing great presentations. This video will contain examples of marketing materials for you to use. If you plan to be in business in the 21st century, this video is a must!

Engineering economy continues to be critical to successful engineering practice. This course covers the basics of the subject with emphasis on methods to support economic analysis in business. You will learn how to make decisions on when to purchase equipment and when to lease, how to amortize investments and quantify the effect of depreciation, and how to compute present worth and future worth of capital investments. Also covered are benefit/cost and incremental analysis, rate of return and interest analysis, leading to a discussion of minimum annual return needed to return a profit on a project. (Tax implications of engineering economy are not covered because of the dynamic nature of tax law).

Here is the information you need to get a new or newly established technical practice up and running on a sound business footing. This course discusses the rewards and challenges of an independent practice and tells you how to get started. It covers how to establish a vision for your practice, the legal requirements for going into business, initial marketing efforts, the requirements for a business contract, how to negotiate that contract, collecting accounts, how to manage your time and where to turn for business assistance. This video is a must for engineers, surveyors or other professionals who wish to establish themselves as independent consultants and service providers or who wish to improve the operation of an existing small practice.

Information security is one of the most important topics today, both for business and individuals. Unfortunately, information security is typically viewed as a technical topic, suitable only for computer professionals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Information security is far more of a managerial and personal topic, than a technical topic. As a result, Dr. Rainer teaches this course from a non-technical, managerial perspective. The course's in-depth coverage includes risk management, threats to your organization's information, and defenses against those threats. On an individual level, the course concludes with guidelines to follow in securing your personal information at home, helping to prevent loss of private, sensitive information and/or identity theft.

Leading Lean has its focus on performance management. During the course you will define performance management, learn about the basics of performance management, create a performance improvement plan, learn how to give effective feedback and how to conduct an ABC analysis. The ABC analysis is a problem-solving process in which the antecedents and consequences currently operating for both the problem and correct behaviors are identified and classified. It is conducted when a behavior you want to happen is not occurring often enough and a behavior you do not want to happen is occurring too often.

Successful lean implementations are determined most often by the effectiveness of people issues rather than technical skills or tools. Extracting performance from individuals and teams is a key to successful continuous improvement. The course will lay the foundation for success through motivating and rewarding people.

This program takes a very complex, vast subject and defines it in one word, RAMPS, enabling anyone to understand and practice marketing techniques. It presents an over view of this business discipline and how it integrates with other business functions to lead to profits for the organizations. Focusing on Services marketing, this training provides a step-by-step program for planning and implementing marketing for the engineering firm. It explains how effective and efficient marketing requires targeting specific segments of the population, identifying behavior patterns and changing them for improved profitability. Specific examples are provided. The RAMPS plan to marketing success is a proven technique, developed for and used in the construction industry for over 20 years.

Most professionals know that the government is a major contractor of professional services. This video explains the unique rules of the game in governmental contracting. Included is an overview of the Brooks Act and other relevant laws and regulations dealing with these services. You will be shown how to identify the projects with details on how to submit your qualifications. The Standard Forms 254 and 255 will be reviewed with tips on what not to include on your submittal. The video will cover the selection process used by most government agencies and what to expect if selected. Included is information on audits, overhead rates and final performance evaluations. If you have not been involved in governmental contracting, this video can help you get started in this major market.

If a project manager was given three wishes concerning an ongoing project, one would surely be its "on time" completion. This course covers scheduling basics from a list-making perspective. You will learn how to develop lists of project activities, assign duration to listed activities, and show interdependence between activities on a logic diagram. You will be taught how to calculate the start/finish timing along these activity paths, prioritize activities based on timing, and to provide answers to critical project questions. And, you will be schooled in updating your schedule -- your list -- in accordance with actual progress. This course can benefit you whether you're a scheduling novice or a seasoned veteran. For the novice, use this course to come up to speed on scheduling terminology and technique. No prior scheduling knowledge is assumed for this course. Let scheduling become a valuable tool in assuring "on-time" performance for your projects. If you're a seasoned veteran that sees merit in "to-do" lists yet relegates scheduling to a necessary evil, perhaps you'll gain a fresh perspective. Seeing schedules characterized as dynamic project lists may serve to take the drudgery out of scheduling.

• Enhance your career by becoming a stronger, more confident presenter
• Present technical content to non-technical audiences in a compelling way
• Start overcoming your fear of presenting and public speaking
• Increase your consulting skills by becoming a better communicator
• Develop a strong and interesting speaking voice
• Utilize a three-step process for handling questions from the audience
• Differentiate between effective and ineffective use of presentation visuals

Effective writing is a key career tool. Every letter, every memo -- every communication you send -- should support your business and personal strategy. Master a new, results-driven formula for writing business correspondence that sparkles with clarity, impact and power. Sharpen your edge and fine-tune your skills in seven easy lessons. Write more effective letters, memos, reports and proposals -- and receive personal feedback as you progress. Learn to streamline your writing and avoid typical writing traps. Increase your competitive edge, all at your own pace from your own computer.

Due to the interactive nature of the course and the individual attention given by the instructor, organizational licenses are not available.

Value Stream Mapping is a tool used to create a material and information flow map of a product or processes. This powerful tool allows companies to map the flow of products in the back door as a raw material, through all manufacturing steps, and off the loading dock as finished product. This is the value stream. You begin the journey with the current state map - it shows you where you are. Then, you plan your Lean journey with the future state map - it shows you where you're going and how you're going to get there. Based on your Value Stream Map, you can streamline work processes, thereby cutting lead times and reducing operating costs.

During the course you will use the powerful Value Stream Mapping tool to create a current state map for a real-world firm featured in a detailed case study. Use the value stream icons and learn the common language of Lean as you draw your current state map for the case company. Next you will analyze the case company's current state, find the non-value added activities, and then draw a future state map for the case company that eliminates those activities. You also develop a plan for attacking those non-value added activities.