Trade Secrets

To share or not to share

June 16, 2004

by David B. South

David B. South,
President of the Monolithic Dome Institute

When you gain considerable amount of knowledge and experience, sometimes you have to be a little bit careful how you disseminate it.

A company in Pocatello, Idaho, back in the 1970's, taught me that. They would call me and ask me to come look at a particular problem they had. So, I would drive the 60 miles and take the time to figure out a solution. Then, I would tell them how I would solve it and they would carefully write it all down. A few weeks later I would get a notice to bid the job.

The problem was that they would have written down exactly how I had told them what needed to be done and sent that bid notice to several other companies who would never have had a clue how to solve the problem if I hadn't told them how.

It only took about three rounds of this before I decided not to get caught in that trap again.

After that, I'd meet with prospective clients and say,

"Yep, you guys have a real problem here. Tell you what I'll do, I will solve it for xxx dollars. All you have to do is decide whether that is in your budget."

Then I would invite them to go ahead and get solutions and bids from other people, but they wouldn't get to use my solutions with someone else who didn't know what they were doing. After they decided if my bid was in their budget I would then tell them my plan and they would still have the option of whether to go for it or not.

For instance, one time the City of Idaho Falls had some head gates on one of the dams where some of the concrete had broken off. They needed those head gates fixed. The only way to fix them was to put the concrete back on the pillars the flood gates rested against. They didn't want to have the flood gates in the down position more than one day. In fact, they really only wanted them down a few hours in order to maximize the power generation.

I told them I could fix it and guarantee it for xxx dollars. Of course, they wanted to know how. Again I told them I would advise them of my methods after they approved the budget. I reassured them they had the right to turn me down but they didn't have the right to use my method with someone else. They gave me the job. I then told them how I was going to fix it. I informed them that if it wasn't going to work, we would know within an hour. At the end of thirty days if it was still working fine, they would owe me the fee.

It was kind of a fun job. In order to get to the spot, I had to take my crawler and hook a trailer on behind it and drive it half way across the snake river. I didn't dare try to use a wheel vehicle because the river bottom was so terribly rough and the water was rushing against the tractor so hard that I felt like it would have washed any other vehicle down river. I drove the crawler with the trailer over to an island area in the center and we made the repairs and drove it on back.

Another similar project took place on Bear River. There was a bridge on the river who's columns had been badly battered by river rock and were in danger of collapse. They needed to have a significant amount of concrete added back on them to protect them from further damage.

I was contacted and asked if I could fix it. I told them I could, but I couldn't do it when the columns were under water. So, we made a deal that they would turn the water off at the dam. They had done this before and knew exactly three days later the water would stop flowing past that bridge. Then would only leave the dam shut for eight hours, which would give me eight hours to effectively make the repairs before the water would be back up to full depth.

By knowing what additives to use with the concrete and the correct accelerators we could fix the bridge support. We were sitting on the banks of the river when the water level dropped. It was dramatic. It was just amazing. In thirty minutes we went from having river full of water to nothing. We jumped out and knocked the loose stuff off these columns with jack hammers and then used our accelerated concrete and sprayed it all back in place. In five hours from the time the river dropped we were done and that gave the concrete three hours to set up before the river hit it. With the accelerators we were using the three hours was adequate and to my knowledge they are still holding well today.

These projects were very specialized and required a considerable amount of experience and know-how to devise their solutions and make it happen. I'm not saying people shouldn't share knowledge, I believe we should and can all learn from each other. Just be careful and try to learn when when not to divulge all your secrets of the trade.

Trade Secrets

To share or not to share

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