Here is a safety excise for sweep professionals:
Take a large highway map where the scale is equal to 1 inch on paper
being equal to 75 to 100 miles of actual road. This will show you the
entire US on a single sheet of paper.
Now take a ruler and measure out a 100 mile radius, 150 mile, and
then 200 mile radius around your office/home. Then draw out another
radius that is 500 miles out, and use a compass to draw four
concentric circles at the 100, 150, 200, and 500 mile out from where
you normally hang your hat.
Plan an average driving speed of 45 mph on limited access highways,
toll roads, and freeways. Sure, you may be able to drive 70 on the
Interstate, but plan on a slower pace due to fuel stops, toll
booths, bathroom breaks, and other things that will slow your
travel. On regular rural roads (the flat corn fields of Iowa) plan to
reduce this by 10 MPH, and by 20 MPH in more densely populated areas.
The 100 mile radius is the primarily area in which you can operate
without a hotel reservation on short duration sweeps, but in which
you may have to load up on coffee to make it home safely, but in
which areas you will not work more then 14 hours door-to-door.
Basically, you normally plan to sleep in your own bed every night.
You may have a 3 days sweep, but each time you drive to the site you
are driving from your own home and not a hotel room.
The 150 mile radius marks a hard transition point where you really
should consider a hotel room between 100 and 150 miles, but at which
point you make hotel reservations 100% of the time. Or to put this
another way, anytime you are more then 150 miles from you office you
will ALWAYS make a hotel reservation and plan to stay in a hotel.
However, if you are merely 115 miles from home you will still make
the hotel reservation, but will likely call at 3 PM to cancel the
room and instead just drive home.
The 200 mile mark is where you start charging the customer for a half
day or more of travel time (depending on traffic), and the 500 mile
line is where you charge them for a full day of travel time. Of
course in both of these cases you will make hotel reservations 100%
of the time, and will plan to stay overnight.
If your 200 miles away (half day) you can drive to the client site at
5 AM, arrive at 9-10 AM, sweep until 5 or 6 PM, and drive 10 minutes
to the hotel and still be fairly safe although exhausted.
On a 500 mile sweep your going to need to drive out the day before,
rest, eat dinner, check your equipment, but it is ill advised to
start the sweep until the next day. With that said, you could meet
with the client, set up an SA in the ceiling, get a tour, and such
the evening of the day you arrive, but you really should not start
the "sweep proper" until you have a good nights sleep.
If you are in reasonably healthy condition, and your vehicle is not a
rust bucket there is no reason why you can not drive 2-3 days in each
direction, spend 3-4 days sweeping, and then drive 2-3 days back.
Merely explain to the client that travel time is billed at half your
normal daily rate, that there is no per diem charge, and that all
travel expenses are included in the daily rate (yeah, yeah, I know
that some of y'all nickel and dime your client for every penny you
can, and then squeeze the nickel until the buffalo poops, but I
prefer to absorb the expenses as a cost of doing business).
To take this one step further take your ruler and measure out a 1000
mile radius, and then a 1500 mile radius. Beyond these ranges you
either want to decline the assignment, or shift the service you are
offering so that it involves you working out of a couple of transit
cases that you can ship as checked baggage either by air or rail. In
the case of a sweep where you are coming in by rail or by air then
you WILL need to charge a per diem rate to cover the rental of a
vehicle, hotel charges, and other charges. If you have your own
vehicle you can keep the costs to an absolute minimum and thus absorb
the cost, if on the other hand you have to contract/pay for
transportation you need to charge these expenses (at cost) to the
client in addition to your normal travel rate (which should be half
your normal rate).
A truly hard-core (full time professional) sweeper keeps pillows,
blankets, and a cot in their vehicle and know that a 2 hour cat nap
in a rest plaza in the back of their vehicle is far more restful then
sucking down huge amount of caffeine which may make you more spun up,
but doesn't actually make you more alert. A four season sleeping bag,
pillow, and shave kit should be just as important to you as your TDR
and Spectrum Analyzer.
From a business perspective, if your client knows that you can cover
a 1500 mile radius you will find that you are getting a huge amount
of repeat customers who have a geographically dispersed operation. If
they trust you enough to sweep their local office, then they will
probably also trust you enough to have you sweep their branch office
(or second home) that is 900 miles away, *** AND *** they will be
happy to pay for the travel time instead of them trying to find two
companies that are local to both locations.
From a vendor perspective it is 20 times better to expand a current
customer to cover more sites, goods, or service then it is to go out
and get new customers. On the other side of things, it is 150 times
more cost effective for a customer to have a current vendor expand
their sites, goods, and services then it is to go out and find a new
vendor in a given area.
-jma
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World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and
Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment.
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James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803
Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467
127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web:
http://www.tscm.com/
Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 E-mail: mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com
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We perform bug sweeps like it's a full contact sport, we take no prisoners,
and we give no quarter. Our goal is to simply, and completely stop the spy.
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:16 CST