This spring has found us forging ahead in IT/MIS.  Getting the crews out the door, plants fired up, and seasonal employees returning is always a frenzied time.  We work as hard as we can during the winter months to service and replace our field machinery for the next construction season…but it’s just darned near impossible to get every little detail taken care of!

Candace and Sandy have been taking some SQL/Crystal classes together as of late.  Sandy is also doing some work in Access and continuing with her duties on the websites and the Mirror.  Candace is busy with more development in the Viewpoint custom databases and more reports.  As we work more and more with Viewpoint as a company, we are finding new and better ways to utilize all the information we put into it on a daily basis.  I don’t think we’ll ever come to a point in time where we’ll decide we’ve got all the reports we need.  Change happens too fast for that.

John is getting ready to go through all the training PC’s and put a new Windows build on each of those.  He’s been playing with wireless networking lately and set up a Wi-Fi hotspot in the main office for visitors and guests that need quick and easy internet access while they’re in the building.  During the summer months, he and I are going to look real heavily into the server upgrades we’ve got planned for the winter of ’06.

I have been doing a lot of work in the realm of Disaster Recovery planning.  If you haven’t ever considered some of the more horrific possibilities that could befall a business, you’re lucky!!!!  In all seriousness, this is very sobering stuff that has to be addressed; especially in the “technology age” where so much of our business depends on the information systems.  I hope to expound more on this in a future column.

It’s been great seeing all of our operations get going again this spring.  The excitement never goes away; no matter how many years you go through the process of starting up.  I hope you all work safely and productively.  If there’s anything we can do to help from our little corner of the world here in Brooklyn call or email.