Marque Engineering is a full-service firm offering mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering, design and consulting services. Founded in 2015 and based in Cincinnati, Marque focuses on commercial, retail, food service and hospitality projects.
The company uses Design Master Electrical on all its projects that involve electrical work. Shane Housh, process specialist and electrical designer, had used Design Master Electrical at a previous employer. According to Mr. Housh, the software has been a critical element in Marque’s success.
“As a new firm in the area, being able to hit the ground running on electrical projects with our very experienced team has been a huge benefit that Design Master Electrical has offered us,” states Mr. Housh. “It allows us to focus on engineering rather than on drafting.”
Mr. Housh continues: “Every building owner expects more services at a quicker pace for a competitive price. Design Master is a great tool to help us meet those expectations.
“There’s no comparison in terms of how fast we can do a project with Design Master compared with other methods. That goes double for when we have to make revisions.
“Another big advantage the software gives us is improved quality control in less time. Design Master is highly customizable to emulate whatever drawings you’re used to seeing. Out-of-the-box with very minor configuration we were able to implement our standards for how we want drawings to look.
“This really helped us get drawings out quickly when we were just starting out. The consistency also supports our quality review process and inherently makes the quality of our drawings much higher,” explains Mr. Housh.
“We do a lot of prototype work—and those projects benefit from using Design Master more than any other type of project because it lets you very quickly make site-specific modifications to the prototype,” Mr. Housh notes.
“Some prototypes are very strict; others are much more open-ended. Design Master Electrical accommodates both of those scenarios and everything in between.
“For example, you can customize the blocks to exactly match what a client expects. You can also customize the colors of text blocks to match required pen settings.
“Basically, anything and everything that a client could require you to do on a prototype, you’re able to do in Design Master with a high degree of automation,” emphasizes Mr. Housh.
Mr. Housh notes several Design Master Electrical features that are particularly beneficial to Marque Engineering:
“I personally really like the equipment creation tool. This allows us to input whatever information we can get—kilowatts, horsepower, FLA, MCA or whatever—and create a functional piece of equipment that’s very easy to insert and modify as needed.
“A related feature that’s incredibly useful with things like diversity is being able to split the equipment up into multiple load types. This helps ensure that all your loads are as accurate as possible. I don’t think you could ever achieve that capability with conventional, spreadsheet-based methods.
“We’re starting to penetrate the residential and mixed-use markets, and this is another area where Design Master has really helped us. With its built-in residential load calculations, it handles all the diversities automatically. That saves us an enormous amount of time.
“In general, Design Master enables us to be responsive to the specific needs of clients and jurisdictions in any number of ways. For example, there are some jurisdictions that require full printouts of voltage drop reports for every branch circuit. Having Design Master automatically create those saves me a ton of time,” enumerates Mr. Housh.
“Marque Engineering is a teaching studio, so we bring in recent grads and engineering interns to learn engineering,” Mr. Housh shares. “Design Master has been an incredibly effective teaching tool as well.
“Not only does it let the engineering interns jump into electrical design very quickly and with minimal instruction, but also it really helps guide their thinking and prompts them to ask the right questions.
“Design Master Electrical has a lot of built-in quality control features that help you catch potential errors, like putting too many receptacles on a circuit. This encourages engineering interns to try out different circuiting methods to see how the calculations come out,” relates Mr. Housh.
“Especially since I’m a process manager, if I had to pick ‘the’ number one selling point for Design Master it would be the support,” Mr. Housh asserts. “It’s better than any other company I’ve ever worked with.
“I always get very prompt and helpful responses from the guys who are actually creating the software. They really know what they’re talking about and are willing to go back and forth with you.
“In my seven-plus years of using Design Master Electrical I’ve always received the same top-tier service,” remarks Mr. Housh. “I’ve never once had any kind of unresolved issue.”
“Time is money, so any time we can save in our drafting and quality control processes, or when doing revisions in the construction administration phase, goes straight to our bottom line,” Mr. Housh points out. “And since we’re in a consulting industry, anything that saves us money gives us a competitive edge in the bidding process as well.
“We can bid a little sharper and get more projects because we can do the work more efficiently than competitors using traditional methods,” summarizes Mr. Housh.
