On Sun, 22 Oct 2000 14:38:35 kilopascal wrote: ... >I wouldn't respond either. You would get my attention if you could show me >how going metric would make me money. If I don't deal with fractions anyway >and just muddle through FFU, so why would I care which method takes less >time or is easier. I want to know what is easier on my wallet. Can you >give me an example of that? >... John's point is very important indeed. Some people would just care about "what's in it for me (meaning exactly the above)?" Well... Sometime ago when I was considering this very point in regards to the construction industry I came with the following very rough estimate. If one considers *only* the time workers spend with calcs in the site, this is what we can demonstrate. It's reasonable to assume that on average if one worker makes, say, 10 calcs per hour of work (I'd say he does much more than this, but, just for the sake of being conservative...) he would save at least 5 seconds per operation, for a savings of 1 minute (rounding it up a little) per hour of work. A construction worker is paid at $20 or so an hour (maybe even more!). So this represents a savings of 33 cents per worker per hour. If the building of a house involves some, say, 8 workers full time (7.5 h/day) for about say 2 months (22 day/mo). That would be a savings of: .33 x 8 x 7.5 x 2 x 22 =~ 870 dollars! Now, if a contractor builds, say, 3 houses a month, there would be a savings of: 870 x 3 x 12 =~ 30 000 dollars a year!! Now imagine the entire construction industry... And I'm not including in the above analysis the significant amount of wastage that would be saved by calculation mistakes and other "intangibles". If this does not convince a construction company to go metric I honestly don't know what would... ;-) Marcus PS: And the above savings would occur *even under the current ifp environment* as all that would be required is for information to be stated in metric (soft or hard, it doesn't really matter!). Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com
