Revamping the Paint Database

A little known fact is that a vamp is a cobblers term for "the upper part of a boot or shoe covering the instep and sometimes extending over the toe;” but to revamp somehow means "to revise or reconstruct." That is exactly MBS is doing with their bidding database for the paint department. Department manager Randy Viereck charged Robert Hall and Winn Martin (the oldest and youngest of the department) with the task. "With the experience Winn brings to the table and the excellent understanding of the software that Robert offers, once the database is complete we will be better prepared to take on future projects," says Randy.

For so long the paint world was run by square foot prices. twenty cents for this, forty-two cents for that. But things are changing with painting today. More and more architects are specifying painters meet LEED requirements and manufacturers are stepping up to the plate with new low and zero VOC (volatile organic compounds) in their paint. These new paints are not as easy to work or understand, probably because they are so new to the industry. Another change is the innovations manufacturers are making with an increased number of paint systems for all the many substrates we cover. All this, and the versatility of the On Center Software that MBS uses for their wonderfully thorough take-offs, called for a change to be made to the database.

Improvements to the database will include a complete list of labor and material codes for our field to use. The biggest transition our drywall contemporaries made a few years ago was the synchronization of their database to match field labor and material reports. Paint hopes to do the same by the end of the year.