Download Thermography Consulting – The Nuts and Bolts of Getting Started

Thermography Consulting –
The Nuts and Bolts of Getting Started
Scott Willits
Redwood Infrared
ABSTRACT
There is a readily available wealth of information regarding any number of infrared applications and the
means of implementing thermography as part of well-rounded PdM (predictive maintenance) programs.
More difficult to find is basic information on how to start a successful thermography consulting business for
somebody with a technical background but new to this particular technology.
This paper is designed to assist in the decision-making process for those sitting on the fence. I left the
InfraMation Conference in Las Vegas last October no more certain I would buy a camera than I was when left
home. But a paper of the nature offered here would have left me feeling a lot more confident that I already
knew what I needed to do. My business is succeeding now, but I wish I hadn’t struggled so many months just
to come up with the questions for which I am now finally able to offer answers.
It might be easier for a potential ThermaCAM® buyer to make that commitment if there were more readily
available information on:
•
Basic financial requirements and realities
•
Training
•
A roadmap to identify and clear the most significant legal and administrative hurdles
•
Public relations and marketing strategies
•
How to generate positive leads that get you in the door to pitch your service
•
How to turn those critical first sales calls into solid contracts that generate repeat business
•
Job estimating and proposal writing
•
Navigating new and unfamiliar industrial environments
•
Effective and efficient survey execution
•
Report delivery and follow-up
INTRODUCTION
First and foremost, I should express with all due candor that I am no expert in anything. This isn’t a technical
paper, and the body of points I make are purely anecdotal, as opposed to the generally empirical reporting
customarily presented in these proceedings. Furthermore, I define “success” for my business in the first year
as simply still being in business as I begin the second year and having been able to support my family on
what I’ve earned, while meeting the base level of financial obligations incurred by the startup, with continuing
and growing optimism for a prosperous future in this field.
EQUIPMENT SELECTION
There are a host of infrared imaging products available today. Like any other technology, it is far more
accessible all the time, with costs coming down significantly even as more powerful features and ease of use
are built into the equipment. For the burgeoning thermographer, it can make selecting the appropriate
equipment a pretty daunting task. Fortunately, the field of truly competitive suppliers tends to be well
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capitalized and linked fairly closely to the manufacturers; and regardless of where you’re located, they are
generally willing to meet with you on your own turf and/or get the equipment in your hands for testing by
whatever means necessary. As long as you’re a serious buyer, it’s fairly easy to arrange for up to a week of
demo time so you’ve got an opportunity to get acquainted with the gear and be sure you know what you can
do with it. Infrared cameras do require periodic service, so be sure you’re dealing with someone who can
facilitate that service, as well as provide an idea what it will cost over time. Be very wary if looking at used
equipment, even if it’s been seldom used. A good deal can look a lot less good if you learn that the camera
needs calibration or has some other issue that will limit its usefulness right out of the box.
Aside from price, what you can do with it is probably the single most important consideration when selecting a
camera. Depending on your particular goals, you want to be sure to get the best resolution you can afford,
along with computer interface and software tools that are compatible with your existing equipment and
knowledge base. A camera that can capture still images is essential, and the ability to record live video,
whether internally or via external camcorder hookup, is very useful. In addition, it allows you to hook up to a
television or projector for live demonstrations of your equipment.
The other most important thing to consider is whether you need fully radiometric capability; that is, whether
you need to be able to detect and record actual temperature information, or whether a qualitative imager is
sufficient for your needs. Radiometric cameras come at a significant premium, so if your objectives are limited
to roofing surveys and building energy applications, it may not be worth the price. On the other hand, if you’re
doing research or working with electrical systems, knowing the deltas is probably important to you, so it’s
something you’re going to have to pay for.
Finally, make sure you’re looking at imagers with acceptable image resolution and ergonomics. Be sure the
eyepiece or LCD screen you’re looking at is crisp and viewable under the working conditions you anticipate,
and that the scan rate is sufficiently high, so you won’t have difficulty capturing the image you’re shooting for
when you pull the trigger. The best optics going aren’t worth anything if the camera is difficult to hang onto all
day, or if you can’t easily park it around your neck or in a holster while you jot down some notes.
TRAINING
There is no substitute for good training in any technical field, and this is particularly true with infrared
thermography. Almost anybody with rudimentary computer skills can probably learn to operate an infrared
camera well enough to get themselves into trouble within a couple of hours. There is no governing body that
dictates any level of formal certification, but in order to learn the science of thermography well enough to be of
service to your clientele and stay out of court, you simply must complete at least a Level I Certification course
in thermography.
There are a handful of good schools that offer this training in the form of three- to five-day workshops at
various locations throughout the country. The cost is generally between $1,500 and $2,000, plus travel
expenses. I won’t recommend any school, but the best one for you might depend on the equipment you
select. If you’re buying a FLIR camera, it probably makes sense to use FLIR’s Infrared Training Center for
your certification, since they’ll tailor your education toward your specific gear. Some of the other schools are
more general and may be better suited to teaching you to use other manufacturers’ imagers. Some suppliers
even offer vouchers to these other schools as part of their equipment sales promotions.
Even if you are book-smart enough to learn the science from articles and other publications, the courses give
you hands-on experience and exposure to a wealth of real-life story-telling from people who have been doing
this for as long as it’s been done. In terms of preparing you to launch a profitable enterprise, it is simply a step
that must be taken, so pencil it into the budget.
You should also attend any and all IR clinics or workshops in the various disciplines to which you may have
access. In addition to the clinics put on by ITC at the InfraMation Conference, there are one- to three-day
workshops on roofing, electrical, mechanical, research, and other fields that are periodically available
throughout the country.
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INSURANCE
If you want to acquire a significant base of high-paying clients, you’re going to have to have professional
insurance. Don’t think you can just form a limited liability corporation and forge on through the fog. But of the
stumbling blocks I faced when launching Redwood Infrared, the biggest was securing business liability and
professional errors & omissions insurance that didn’t cost almost as much as my FLIR ThermaCAM. Though
I’m not a professional engineer, I’m an environmental engineer by training. Since most insurance applications
want your curriculum vitae, the agents managing the first several quotes I solicited took it upon themselves to
tack the initials “P.E.” onto the end of my name. The next thing I knew, they had me designing bridges and
skyscrapers to the tune of $15,000 a year, just in case somebody stubbed their toe walking into my office
building.
What I finally realized is that the insurance industry would write a policy for just about anybody doing anything
during the high-tech boom years, because they weren’t really making money in insurance anyway. They just
needed cash flow to keep pumping into their investments, and that’s where the real profits were to be found.
But once the stock market tanked and we moved into this long recession, all of a sudden the insurance
industry had to start displaying a little discipline, and it got a lot more difficult to secure good coverage if you
couldn’t very clearly spell out what it is that you do. They just aren’t willing to accept the risks that they once
were.
That becomes a problem for start-up thermography consulting businesses, because what we do is so bloody
difficult for your average bureaucrats to wrap their minds around. Not to knock insurance agents; I’m sure
many of them are fine people. But let’s face it, they’re not involved in the most technically challenging field,
and they frankly have no idea what’s going on in much of the real world.
So after several months of talking to a dozen different brokers, I only had three or four quotes for coverage I
could even compare, and they were all more than I could afford. I’d already spent my nut on the camera, and
I’d taken on a handful of small jobs. But I couldn’t go after any industrial business, because I wasn’t covered
for it. I tried talking to a couple of electricians to see about riding on their policies as a subcontractor, but it
was far too complicated, limiting what I could do and where I could go. And it would not have been
sustainable in any event.
With a cash flow squeeze fast approaching, I was finally rescued by an individual insurance agent within one
brokerage I’d already been dealing with for a while, one day when my regular contact happened to be out of
the office. This new guy didn’t know anything more about what I was trying to do than anybody else I’d dealt
with unsuccessfully; he just happened to be smart enough and patient enough to listen carefully. He helped
me construct an application that was as much about what I won’t do as what I will. It was far more than what
is generally asked for on the applications, but by excluding specific activities, such as actually performing any
electrical repairs that my analysis might prescribe, we finally got one underwriter to take a closer look and
develop a level of coverage that was more appropriate to what I was trying to accomplish. The end result was
a quote that came in at about a third of what I’d been seeing. At $4,500 per year it’s still a significant chunk of
change, but it’s a lot nicer to think about than $13,000 and really no more than any other type of non-technical
consultant might pay for general liability and professional errors & omissions coverage.
The lesson to take away from this is that you must take the bull by the horns. Thermography is not yet a
clearly categorized niche market that the bean counters can just look up on a list and tell you what the rate is.
So you’ve got to tell them what you do and what you don’t. If it’s not really easy, many brokers will let your file
stagnate, so you’ll have to hector them to get any results. Don’t call one or two of them and wait for results;
spend the better part of a day collecting applications and append them all with a thorough, written description
of your company, being careful to spell out where you draw the line. Unless you are already a licensed
electrician, specify that you will never set foot on anybody’s plant floor unaccompanied, nor will you open an
electrical panel, but that you will have your client’s staff or contract electrician perform that task while you
stand back and take pictures. It’s no fun, but the sooner you begin this process, the sooner you can pitch your
services to local utilities and major industrial concerns who will write you big checks when you give them your
invoices.
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LEGAL ISSUES
I’m not going to go into what form your business ought to take, be it sole proprietorship or LLC or whatever –
there are plenty of resources that can guide you through those general kinds of business decisions.
But at some point you are going to need a contract, and unless you’re a lawyer or have a lot of general
contracting experience, you’re probably going to need some legal assistance in preparing it. Therein you’ll
discover the same conundrum you faced when seeking insurance. Most lawyers ain’t dumb guys, but when
you walk through the door with your E4 or P60, all they know is that the Supreme Court said you can’t use it
to bust out the indoor dope growers.
So your lawyer is going to need a lot of information from you in order to prepare a contract template that will
be useful to you across the spectrum of potential clients you’d like to serve. It will no doubt turn out that 90%
or better of any document they generate will be standard boilerplate language, just tweaked here and there to
address your issues. The remaining 10% will be largely up to you. So why pay for it?, you may ask, and that’s
a good question. But you do need it, and it’s got to be tight. And if you’re to secure contracts with sizeable
entities, the credibility you will have bought when you pay for those legal resources will be money well spent.
The protection you will have secured by essentially having a legal advocate on retainer when you pay for that
contract should help you sleep at night. But before you spend that money, know that the more research you
can do to provide your attorney with concise information as he prepares your contract, the more quickly it can
be prepared and the less it will cost you. Know, too, that as long as you’re on the phone with him, the meter is
running – even if you’re just swapping lies about fishing.
MARKETING
Once you’ve got the gear and you’re all legit with insurance and a contract in hand, you’re ready to begin
looking for business. As with any enterprise, you must dedicate a significant part of your time to marketing
and public relations. Make no mistake about it, you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck out of public relations.
Even if you never capture a single job that isn’t the direct result of a cold call, those cold calls are far likelier to
bear fruit if you have a presence in the community and the people to whom you’re selling have at least a
fundamental idea of what it is you’re selling.
Forget about advertising. Sure, have cards and brochures printed and pass them out liberally, but why pay for
expensive ad space or air time when you can easily get local newspapers and radio stations to feature your
business for free? Capitalize on the ‘gee-whiz’ factor! This stuff is fascinating – that’s why we’re all here, after
all. Every Mom n’ Pop & Joe Sixpack out there is intrigued by something as cool as infrared, but to capture
their imagination you’ve got to get across the point that we’re not talking about the same thing that makes
their $250 camcorder work in the dark.
Spend some time putting together a couple of versions of a good-quality PowerPoint slide show and start
looking for opportunities to present it. Introduce yourself to local Rotary and Kiwanis club chapters and ask for
a chance to speak at one of their lunches. These gigs are not only easy to land, but they are guaranteed to
get you invitations to speak to realtors associations and other industry trade groups. Your basic presentation
should be very general, with a brief, non-technical overview of what infrared is, how it works, and what it’s
good for, with plenty of pictures. Be sure you have the ability to plug your camera into the LCD projector or a
separate TV monitor, so you can do some real-time stuff with the camera. Show people what they look like
and how you can leave a thermal hand print on the wall. Show them the studs in any exterior walls nearby;
demonstrate how IR won’t pass through clear glass but will pass right through a black plastic garbage bag.
Pour some boiling water into a large bowl, throw a couple of ice cubes in it, and watch the little weather
system that forms.
Offer free residential scans as silent auction or raffle prizes for school and community group fund raisers.
Sponsor a Little League baseball team. If there’s a local track team that holds indoor meets, offer to judge the
shot put events. Introduce yourself to your local fire and police departments, and even if they have infrared
equipment of their own, offer to show up with yours, in the event they ever need it. All of these things not only
impress the people you’re directly interacting with, they attract the attention of local TV, radio, and
newspapers, which only leads to more exposure and more phone calls. The more people know about
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infrared, the more fascinated with it they become, and the more likely you are to get your phone calls returned
when you go out shopping for customers.
SALES
The difference between marketing and sales is when you do it and when you see the results. Marketing is
long term, branding, image building, public relations work. Sales is feet-on-the-street work that lands you
actual jobs you can do and get paid for.
When asked, a lot of people will tell you they are more afraid of public speaking than they are of spiders.
Myself, I used to climb radio towers for a living; I’m happy to jump out of a perfectly good airplane; and I love
to surf some of the biggest waves the Pacific Ocean can hurl at the West Coast in the dead of January. I get
butterflies as much as the next guy, but I have fun giving presentations if I can keep it lighthearted. But I’m
scared to death of spiders. Put one on me and I’ll scream like a little girl. Then when I get done climbing the
walls and killing the spider, I’ll put a hurtin’ on you if you don’t get out of my face. Even so, I used to feel I’d
rather do battle with a herd of tarantulas than be in sales and have to make cold calls all day.
One of the best moves I made when launching Redwood Infrared was hooking up with the North Coast Small
Business Development Council. Not only did they provide much support in developing my business plan –
which is something you need to do, no matter what business you’re going into – but they also provided 10
free hours with a professional sales and marketing consultant.
Given that up to this point in my career, I’d had the luxury of working in a field where basically the customers
just came through the door, it was pretty daunting to me at age 40 to all of a sudden have to go looking for
work every day. And I had no idea how to navigate the personnel firewalls that most managers have set up
around them. It can be very difficult not just to get face time with decision makers, but often to even identify
who they are. That’s one reason why marketing is so important – my first big jobs came to me as a result of
newspaper articles written about my new company. But sooner or later, you’ve got to start knocking on doors.
What I learned is that you don’t have to worry about coming off like a salesman if you’re concise and polite
and ask the right questions. The ‘elevator pitch’ is tough for infrared, because there are so many possible
applications that it can be very difficult to give someone a clear understanding of what it is you do in 30
seconds or less. But when calling a specific target client, it should be easy to keep it brief. “I’m calling about a
new high-tech service in our area that can save your company thousands of dollars by making your
operations more reliable and efficient. Would you be the person I would speak to about this?” If the answer is
yes, ASK for no more than five minutes of their time, and stick to it. If you’ve got a prospect, at the end of five
minutes ask if they’d like to hear more and set up an appointment for a demonstration. If the answer is no,
politely ask for the name of the person you should be speaking to, and follow that same procedure with them.
The key here is that you’re not wasting one minute of anybody’s time without their express permission. More
importantly, you’re not wasting your own time on prospects that aren’t going to generate hot leads, so you can
move on to the next call and stay productive, with a minimum of fallout from any rejection you may
experience.
I do understand that even this level of salesmanship can be extraordinarily difficult for many people. The
hardest part is often just getting started. A friend who is now a reporter, but used to be in sales and has spent
his life on the telephone, taught me a useful trick. Of course, you should always make the majority of your
calls early in the day when people are most likely to be at their desks. First thing in the morning, you should
call somebody you know. Just call a friend, or call to confirm an existing appointment or to follow up with a
recent client. It doesn’t matter who it is or what it’s about, just call them to get you started interfacing with that
telephone on your desk and comfortable with the activity. Develop this as a habit over time. It’s amazing how
much easier cold calling can become.
LANDING BUSINESS
Infrared equipment is not cheap, and you have to charge a significant rate in order to make any money using
it. This creates many obvious obstacles to be overcome on your way to closing the deal. The single most
important factor to emphasize is not the cost, but the cost-effectiveness of the technology. Used correctly in
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the right hands, infrared has a long-established track record of returning a 20:1 or better cost/benefit ratio. If
you’re pitching an industrial facility that runs a lot of high-voltage, three-phase motors, prompt the client by
asking what the downtime and repair costs associated with failure of a single high-function 20 hp motor on
their floor might be and when the last time such a failure occurred. Odds are such a failure has occurred in
the last year and that the repair costs alone were equal to or greater than the cost of your bid for a preliminary
scan of their facility. Factor in the lost production revenue associated with downtime, and all of a sudden
you’re not talking about a cost, but rather, an investment. Suggest that for each dollar saved on maintenance,
the client can avoid spending up to $7 on marketing. It’s true, because money saved on maintenance isn’t
filtered through the entire accounting process; it is money added directly to the bottom line.
Always offer your target client a free demonstration, and seize the earliest opportunity to get out on the shop
floor with them. Show them what you see with the imager, and put it in their hands. It’s inevitable that if they
offered you 15 minutes, you’ll end up spending an hour or more with them, and you’ll leave with an invitation
to submit a proposal to do business.
PROPOSAL WRITING
Depending upon your target industry, proposals can take many forms, but in my experience, the more simple,
the more effective. Include a brief cover letter, and then detail the scope of work in bullet-list format, being
sure to itemize any specific requirements or exclusions. I am most interested in developing long-term
relationships, so I tend to write proposals with an eye toward that goal. If the level of interest is high, then
tailor the proposal for an exhaustive level of analysis. If not, it is sometimes appropriate to offer a preliminary
or cursory scan at a standard hourly or half-day rate in order to provide a better idea of how your service can
be integrated into their operations.
In all cases, prepare proposals in writing and, whenever possible, hand-deliver them at the earliest
opportunity. Email and faxes are great for getting info around, but they are also easily ignored or forgotten. If
you’re limited to those mediums, be sure to follow up with phone calls. Once you’ve invested that much in a
lead, don’t let it languish or wait for the client to contact you.
BIDDING AND ESTIMATING
As in any field, bidding and estimating the cost of your thermographic services can be one of your more
difficult tasks, particularly if you’re taking your equipment into new areas with which you might not be terribly
familiar. Rates across the country tend to run on the order of $100 to $150 per hour, or between $700 and
$1250 per day in the field, depending on the type and cost of equipment, your level of expertise, and the
criticality of the application. Roofing surveys are nice, because you can bid them by the square foot, on the
order of 2 cents for large jobs, up to 6 or 8 cents per square foot for buildings with a footprint under 20,000 ft2.
On my first power plant survey, even though I’ve got a firm grasp of power production theory, I had very little
experience in that environment in the field. I knew from speaking with experienced thermographers that it
should normally take no more than two full days to perform and report on a thorough scan of a 15 MW
cogeneration plant, but I also knew I would have a learning curve, and that it would take some homework to
come up to speed on the vocabulary and operational characteristics of the facility. Since this particular client
had sought me out in response to some free media exposure, I was quite blunt about this in my proposal. It
was an older solid biofuel plant running even older equipment, and they’d never had any infrared work done
onsite, so I suggested that three days might be more appropriate than two so that we could really get down
and dirty. I further asked their indulgence if it took me a full week or more to complete the work, but I only
billed them for three days. This approach was readily accepted, and I probably learned as much about power
plant design and operation in that week as I did about infrared when I took my Level I course – only this time I
got paid for it instead of the other way around.
Ultimately, what you bid for your work will be based on what the market will bear. Just be sure to bid what it’s
worth, and don’t undersell yourself.
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EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT SURVEY EXECUTION
There’s not a whole lot I can add here to what you should take away from any good Level I training course
with respect to performing surveys and generating reports, but I will emphasize how important it is to keep in
mind what your objectives are and that your methods be consistent and organized.
If you have a P60, PM695, or other high-end camera with integrated still visual and voice or text annotation
capabilities, use them. If not, be sure to take your time recording very good notes as to just what each image
you record is by file name, and be liberal with the use of your digital camera, as well, so you’ve got plenty of
information to assist you in creating an accurate report later. Use a spreadsheet program to generate a
standard form on which you write down the filename; a description of your target, along with any catalogued
identification markers your client might use; load conditions; and other pertinent data. Be sure to include the
job name, contact info in case you have questions later, and your start and finish time for billing purposes. It
may slow down the pace of the survey somewhat, but it will save you a lot of time at the keyboard later.
REPORT DELIVERY AND FOLLOW-UP
When you’re providing a professional service for which clients are paying real money, personal attention
cannot be emphasized enough. For most clients, infrared should not be a one-shot deal, but rather a regularly
implemented component of their maintenance programs. This makes you a part of their team, and, as such,
when you have a finished product to deliver, you need to make sure, for the client’s benefit as well as your
own, that it is given its proper level of attention. If you just email it or send it via courier, it might be weeks – if
ever – before the proper time is spent addressing any concerns you might have indicated.
Upon completion of any survey, just as soon as I am able, I always hand-deliver two bound copies of my
written report, along with a CD-ROM containing all the report files; the still images captured during my work;
and live video, if I recorded any. I always make an appointment for this delivery and make it a point to sit
down with the client and go through the reports, so I can highlight any areas needing attention that I might
have found. This is a great time to suggest follow-up service as well – which you may charge for or offer as a
courtesy, depending on the scope and nature of repairs that may take place upon your recommendation.
These steps don’t necessarily generate any revenue, but they’re just good business and will go a long way
toward securing long-term relationships with repeat customers who will also prove to be invaluable references
as your business continues to flourish and grow.
SUMMARY
Seasoned maintenance professionals setting off on their own might not have any difficulty deciding which
equipment best suits their purposes or figuring out how to secure business right out of the gate, but aspiring
entrepreneurs just breaking into the field face many unique challenges. Fortunately, there are resources like
the InfraMation proceedings and a host of experienced thermographers willing to provide many of the
technical details. Hopefully, this paper will help fill in some of the other blanks. This is a market virtually
without ceiling for the foreseeable future, and the more the merrier, I say. Each competent user of infrared
technology only increases its visibility and enhances its credibility as the rising tide lifts all our boats.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to offer my sincerest thanks for their contributions to the success of Redwood Infrared to the following:
thermography professionals Ron Lucier, Eric Hughes, Chris Alicandro, Harley Dinio, Bill Grondahl, Jack
Allinson, and Steve Moore – a couple of whom probably don’t even know who I am, but who had an
enormous influence on one of the most critical and difficult decisions I’ve ever made; Redwood Technology
Consortium, especially Tina Nerat and Maggie Gainer; Redwood Coast Energy Authority; Northcoast Small
Business Development Council; Redwood Regional Economic Development Commission; marketing
consultant Scott Q. Marcus; Bob Marino and Mark Savage of Fairhaven Power Company; Dean Viseth of
George Petersen Insurance Agency; Rick Levin, Greg Field, Tom Abate, and Larry Goldberg for listening to
me ramble and providing such intelligent feedback; Kevin Pond; my incredibly patient wife, Lou; and above all
else, Dr.Tom Borgers, for showing me the way, thermodynamically speaking.
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