excellence
'Over and over at seminars and trade shows, watershapers ask me three distinct but interrelated questions: "How do you get into the high-end market?" and "How do you deal with wealthy customers?" and "How do you handle those kinds of jobs?" 'The short answer to all of them,' began Brian Van Bower in his Aqua Culture column in the April 2004 issue of WaterShapes, ' is that I've set myself up for it and am prepared to
I'm still stunned by news of the intended merger between the National Swimming Pool Foundation and the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals. I've been a professional observer of the pool/spa component of the watershaping universe for more than 30 years now, and I was caught completely off guard by
'It's a fact of life,' declared David Tisherman in opening his Details column 15 years ago this month: 'The best design feature in the world isn't worth anything if it isn't executed properly. And no matter how good your in-house staff or subcontractors are, they need guidance when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts work of getting the job done the way its designer intends.' '[W]hen you have good, tight supervision provided by a knowledgeable overseer working with good crews and a good set of plans, anything
'During the past few years,' wrote Brian Van Bower to open his Aqua Culture column in March 2001, 'I've come to the stark realization that there are too few quality craftspeople in most geographical areas of our country. And it's not just the watershaping trades: The same holds true for most areas of the greater construction industry as well.' 'The hard reality is that, for many people in the trades, it's easier to do three ordinary jobs in a week than it is to do one challenging project over a month. I'm starting to think that
'I've had the pleasure of teaching hydraulics to watershapers in a variety of classroom settings,' noted Dave Peterson in opening his Currents column in the May 2010 edition of WaterShapes. 'These courses . . . ask a lot of the students who sign up for them . . . [and] I find it enormously encouraging that so many people are focused on spending the time and energy required to improve their skills and
In 2001, as part of his ‘Aqua Culture’ column in WaterShapes, Brian Van Bower penned a thought-provoking piece entitled “Quality Don’t Come Easy.” In it, he decried what he saw as a dearth of quality craftspeople in the watershaping trades — and in the broader construction industry as well. “Time and again,” he noted, “I commiserate with colleagues who just can’t find good people who are dedicated to
Through the years – but particularly within the past two or three – one of the comments I’ve heard with the greatest frequency is that WaterShapes is improving dramatically with respect to the content it presents. I’m always happy to hear any kind of positive feedback, but I’m always curious to know what about our coverage seems to be improving the most and always ask those who are making these comments to be as specific as they can. “Frankly,” I tell them, “I’m so close to what we print in the magazine that I
In December 2004, WaterShapes introduced ‘The Platinum Standard,’ a registry of projects that embodies watershaping at its finest. Now, as part of our celebration of the magazine’s 100th Issue, Eric Herman offers ‘The Platinum Standard II,’ a fresh set of 20 projects that have graced the pages of the magazine in the past three-and-a-half years – projects that demonstrate clearly that watershaping has become an art form in its own right. I’ll never forget the day Jim McCloskey suggested starting a magazine on systems that contain and control water. We were walking near his home in Woodland Hills, Calif., when he broached the idea, saying it had come to him as something of an epiphany while
Deficits of Trust