UF-MP23 Continuing Services Awarded

We are so happy to announce that Gmuer Engineering will continue to provide Civil Engineering services to the University of Florida and all of its departments for the next 3 years and this is the 3rd consecutive award to GmuerEng. We have worked on UF projects for most of our careers and we bring this experience to all of our projects at UF. Thanks to Donna Patterson for her great work on the Proposal Package. Also congratulations to our professional peers that have also been selected to provide architectural and engineering services to UF.

Awarded Lake City 2022 Continuing Services Contract

We are happy to announce that Gmuer Engineering was awarding a continuing services contract with Lake City coming in 2nd of 6 firms awarded. We are very proud of our working relationship with Lake City and their needs for infrastructure, design, and permitting. We have been very successful in gaining these types of contracts due to our attention to the needs of each City / University we work with. Thank you Donna Patterson our Marketing Director for her ability to communicate the skills and experience of our team to serve the public.

Link to all of our continuing service contracts….

University of Florida 2020-2023 Continuing Services

After an intensive tiered selection process, we are so happy to announce that Gmuer Engineering will continue to provide Civil Engineering services to the University of Florida and all of its departments for the next 3 years. Many of us at GmuerEng have worked on UF projects for most of our careers and many of us are also Gator Grads. We bring this experience to all of our projects at UF. Thanks to Donna Patterson for her great work on the Proposal Package as it shined above some of largest civil engineering firms in the state.

2020-05-25 PDC Selection Notice.png

sUAS / Drone Certified

We are very happy to announce that Gmuer Engineering is FAA Part 107 Licensed and Insured for Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) Operations (Drones) as well as authorized to operate on the UF Campus. We utilize drones to augment site visits and construction services to better serve our clients. We have utilized drone aerials in many of our recent projects and its shown to have dramatically shortened the process of conceptual planning, increased the accuracy of our 30% plans, identified macro level design concerns not visible at ground level, and increased the completeness of out construction visit documentation in less time. Below are some examples.

FAA-Certified-Pilot-Seal.jpg

Sharing our Decentralized Work Strategy

Christopher Gmuer 352-281-4928

Christopher Gmuer
352-281-4928

I love optimizing workflows; its rewarding to find easier ways to get work done that also mitigates for human error. What I really find amazing is how important human interaction is to the creativity and value we bring to our clients. When I started my firm in 2016, my goal was to rethink traditional workflows of the design professional and office workers. My goal was to merge optimized workflows with human creativity to reduce error and bring more value. That was my competitive edge. We have since built a workplace where half of our staff is already virtual and the other half freely work from home as needed for flexibility in their life. We are fully connected to each other and productive. So when COVID-19 mandated these alternate working conditions, we really sympathized with out friends at partner companies. We know its hard to get real work done with a subset of the tools you normally have at your disposal. That’s when I decided it was a good time to share our solutions - perhaps there is something in here that can ease the stress lost productivity. I know many of you are feeling it. I also realize these technology transitions are not easy. If it was, you would have already switched over years ago. It takes experimentation and working out the wrinkles. So as you read through this link and have questions, please feel free to give me a call. I am a geek about this and would enjoy talking shop about business workflows and processes. Call me at 352-281-4928

Our standardized workstation - each employee has this both at the office and at home - laptop plugs into power and dock for a full size keyboard, pen tablet, and 4k 43” screen - only way to eliminate paper

Our standardized workstation - each employee has this both at the office and at home - laptop plugs into power and dock for a full size keyboard, pen tablet, and 4k 43” screen - only way to eliminate paper

Phones - Most of you have 3 phone numbers; a company extension, a direct desk phone number, and a cell number. You have to track text and voicemails on all of them and have no access to some of them from home. We use Grasshopper.com to assign one number to each employee and the phone calls and texts are contained in one app on their personal cell phone or web browser on the computer and all voicemails get text transcription and are emailed to your inbox. You can control you Phone call schedule to keep you sane in the mornings / evenings / weekends or screen your calls before picking them up. We can transfer calls between employees and forward an important voicemail to your co-worker.

Shared File System - You’ll notice that I didn’t say file server or VPN for access to files. These solutions depend on a reliable internet connection between home and the office for each open and save operation. Any abnormality in the connection really adds fragility to productivity and more importantly add frustration. A solution needs to use the local SSD / Hard Drive of the computer for performance and up-time and use the internet for sync. Dropbox and other similar clouds is fine. We use a peer-2-peer solution called Resilio Sync.

Conference Calls - You need a conference call system that doesn’t need you to install software, has traditional phone call-in support, easy screen sharing, and allows for both scheduled meetings and quick meetings instant. We use Join.me and its cousin GoToMeeting since it has many of these features. Its so easy that in the middle of a phone call, I’ll pause to send link for the other person to see my screen.

Text Chat - This is almost more important than a conference call system. We have a group chat in Google Hangouts to coordinate on submittals and issues and have individual chats when sharing progress updates and instructions. I might recommend Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Hardware and Software Licenses - We chose a hardware combination that is easy and inexpensive to replicate so that we can provide each employee an identical workplace computing setup even at home. We also switched from desktops to laptops since the cost of just one AutoCAD license alone more than pays for a laptop and the risk of damage or theft of that laptop. However, you can’t just use any hardware and expect it to run AutoCAD, be inexpensive, support 4k, and not have some headaches. Even a pencil lead breaks and a pen runs out of ink. Same is true with technology. I love talking about equipment and hardware. Give me a call.

Task Management - Your team needs to keep track of who’s holding the ball and who needs to catch it next. In the office, you had team meetings, stand-up meetings, stopped by someone’s desk, left a note, etc. and the project manager kept a passive eye on progress by hearing people talk about the project, answered questions, and saw physical activity. Don’t discount this. Its important and it needs to be replicated it in the cloud. I even programmed my own version of this in 2009 for my old company. My absolute favorite system is Asana.com, its free up to 15 people. Maybe you start the roll-out with your PM’s and figure out your best practices and customs before a larger roll out.

Tracking Work Hours - You still need to track people’s hours. Since we don’t track time per project, we find emailing timesheets to the HR email account works just fine. Your existing system is likely local networked based and probably need specific tracking needs. I don’t have a suggestion for this.

Tracking Project Hours - Call me if you still thing you should be tracking hours per project. I have a way better solution for this.

Password Sharing - Your company has a bunch of websites that have different employees that need to share the login credentials. LastPass that is cross-platform and lets us sync password, encrypt them per user, share passwords with a limited group of employees, and never reuse a password.

PDF Markup - No one has a good printer at home and its just infeasible to replicate. Also your 5-year-old is really terrible at AutoCAD redlines. You need to get your relines to the right person and that person no longer works next to you. The solution also needs to be so friction free that its better than paper. We use a graphic artist screen tablets attached to our computer so that our PDF markup software directly opens and saves from the shared file system. This means we can cut and paste from another screen and application and also view it on our 43” 4K screen at full size and high resolution. No transferring sketches from an iPad and the graphic tablet only responds to a pen, there is no touch. Its as if were real paper. Without these tools, its no wonder paper still hangs around most offices. That’s been huge change at our office.

Email & Calendars - Most companies have already moved to the cloud for these items choosing either Office 365 or Google G-Suite so I will skip going into much detail. However, you still have an email server in the office, cloud services are only $5 per person per month, billed monthly. And no need to pay for Outlook, its all in your web browser.

Computer Support - Your IT staff needs a way to diagnose computer issues and help your people reduce down time. You need some sort of remote support software. Most times screen sharing is good enough for this, but a remote desktop solution can save tons of time. We use Chrome Remote Desktop for this, it has a bunch of other features, and its free.

Zapier.com - Lets you automate workflows between your mix of cloud solutions. Saves a bunch of time.

HR and Accounting - Put your bookkeeping in the cloud and automate your payroll. We use Xero and Gusto for this. Its amazing.

Virtual Presence - This is the most recent solution we have implemented. People like people, we like to interact, tell jokes, etc. and we form bonds with our co-workers. An office provides a low friction atmosphere for these team building interactions. We needed something more than a video call. We use tandem.chat to provide a continuous video feed of employees who want to hang around the virtual “water cooler” where you can see each other as you work, see if someone is on the phone, see if someone is back from lunch, see if someone looks deep in thought, and un-mute when you want to tell a joke or ask a simple design question. We found tandem.chat a few weeks ago and its pretty cool.

A closeup of the pen tablet we use that connects to the operating system for friction-less access to files and sharing them with our co-workers. No touch support, only pen.

A closeup of the pen tablet we use that connects to the operating system for friction-less access to files and sharing them with our co-workers. No touch support, only pen.

Open House - GmuerEng - Feb 21st 5-8pm Friday

Open House New Sign.jpg

Open House
Gmuer Engineering

We would like to welcome everyone to a Friday Open House at our Office. There will be food, great conversation, and come meet our team. All are welcome.

Friday, Feb 21st 5-8pm
1135 NW 23rd Ave, Suite G
Gainesville, FL 32609

No RSVP needed, come anytime.
An email helps us plan food.
info@gmuereng.com

Click to Add to Calendar

Awarded Lake City Continuing Services

Lake City Fl Logo Square.png

We are happy to announce that Gmuer Engineering was awarding a continuing services contract with Lake City good for the next 5 years. We are very proud of our working relationship with the City and their needs for infrastructure design and permitting. Our success in gaining these types of contracts began with our work with the City of Newberry a few years ago leading to our first continuing services contract which has expanded to include many many others. Thank you Donna Patterson our Marketing Director for her ability to communicate the skills and experience of our team to serve the public.
Link to all of our continuing service contracts….

Marckley Etienne, PE joins Gmuer Engineering

marckley.jpg

We are very happy to announce that Marckley Etienne, PE is joining the Gmuer Engineering team as a Senior Engineer and as our South Florida Branch Manager. Marckley has many years of design and permitting experience with a wide variety of development projects right in line with the specialties of GmuerEng. Chris and Marckley were colleagues at CHW and Marckley has spent the last 5 years in South Florida with IBI Group, Inc. We are very glad to have him and to offer our services in South Florida. You can meet Marckley at our open house on Feb 22nd and contact him at marckleye@gmuereng.com and (954) 363-2335.

GmuerEng New Office / Open House - Feb 22nd 5-8pm Friday

Gmuer Engineering
New Office
Open House

We would like to welcome everyone to a Friday Open House at our New Office. There will be food, great conversation, and come meet our team with our recent additions. All are welcome.

Friday, Feb 22nd 5-8pm
1135 NW 23rd Ave, Suite G
Gainesville, FL 32609
No RSVP needed, come anytime.
An email helps us plan food.
info@gmuereng.com

Click to Add to Calendar

Special thanks to Danika Oliverio, our realtor and long time friend, for her help in tracking down this great location. @danikaoliverio.realtor

Proud to be a 40 Under 40

We are so proud of our founder, Christopher Gmuer, for being selected by the Gainesville Sun for their 40 under 40. The list came out just before Christmas of 2018 and is a great honor. Starting Gmuer Engineering 3 years ago and managing its great growth has been amazing and we want to thank our clients for getting us off the ground and our staff for producing great solid work and getting our reputation our there. We are looking forward to a great 2019!

Link to Article

Pages from 40underFortyWinners Chris Gmuer.png
Pages from 40underFortyWinners Chris Gmuer - Full.png

Heather Hinson joins Gmuer Engineering

HeatherHinson.jpg

We are very happy to announce that Heather Hinson is joining the Gmuer Engineering team as a Senior Project Coordinator. Heather has many years of direct experience most recently at CHW in their Engineering Department and before that with the City of Gainesville Public Works Department. Many of you have worked with her as she ushered projects through the complexity of the development review process. We are so glad to have her and to work with her. You can contact Heather at heatherh@gmuereng.com.

Forrest Eddleton joins Gmuer Engineering

We are very happy to announce that Forrest Eddleton is joining our Gmuer Engineering team as Planning Director. Forrest has experience in the non-profit, academic, and public sectors and comes to us from the City of Gainesville Department of Doing. So many of you have worked with him over the last several years as he guided the complex design considerations that go into our projects. He encourages dialogue between stakeholders and cultivated collaborative , sustainable, and resilient solutions. We are glad to add his knowledge and expertise to our team and to make a positive long term difference in our community. You can contact Forrest at (352) 593-3159 and forreste@gmuereng.com

Michael Promoted to Technical Operations Manager

We are very happy to announce the promotion of Michael Gmuer as our Technical Operations Manager. His skill in structuring and solving digital problems comes from a career in a wide range of electronic and internet based fields. Over the past year with Gmuer Engineering, many of you have worked with Mike and seen him become an integral part of our normal civil engineering workflows. However, behind the scenes, he has become integral in implementing our technology driven vision. He developed our rapid production laser cut 3D color site plan models, 3D extrusion printing, optimizing our equipment for our engineering workflows, helps with our targeted marketing efforts, and I could go on and on. We are very thankful to have him. Also, if you noticed his last name, yes, he’s my brother. For the past decade I’ve been trying to find a way to work with him and it finally happened - I couldn’t be happier. If you would like to reach Mike, please feel free to email him at mikeg@gmuereng.com or at (352) 593-3145.

New Vehicle Branding

Great car wrap by our friends at The Sign Universe - we'll see you all around town at client, design, pre-app, neighborhood, board approval, and construction meetings!