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I own a technology management firm. We were retained by MUO (Miss Universe Organization), a Trump company at the time (2009). We were tasked with pulling together a network predicated upon the assembly of ‘real-time infrastructure’ to meet the communication challenges of the constant shift in location, international standards of communication, and geographically dispersed locations .Our travel & expense costs were never paid. We could live with that (sort of). But as the months passed we couldn’t get a single bill paid by the MUO. Trump cited reasons such as “that’s a different management team, you will have to live with their decisions.” A friend close to Trump who recommended my firm reached out to him in an effort to obtain final payment. Trump was so annoyed by the call that he said “I’ll be damned if that company ever gets a dime from my team.”Trump was true to his word. Final bill for MUO ending 2009: $275k - collected to date: Zero. Now that he’s sold off the MUO as of one year ago he now claims no memory of “the deal.”Trump’s idea behind ‘The Art of The Deal” should have focused on his true “art” & passion for screwing anyone & everyone.However, when we continued our collection efforts we received letters from his legal team citing no obligation to pay for services that were not delivered according to the agreement. We filed a disconnect notice for non-payment. Waited & waited to no avail. We pulled our servers 48 hrs prior to his next pageant . MUO called with demands to restore service. Their demands fell on deaf ears.Trump is a narcissistic crook. Most criminals are.*March 10th. 2017 UPDATE: Electrical contractor suing Trump Hotel for $2 million in unpaid bills

Warning; Super Long Answer: About 3300 words. Read only if interested and if you have the time and patience.Question: What influenced and inspired your choice of career.Answer:I can’t put my finger on what exactly it was.I did not plan anything initially. My career was guided by fate/luck/circumstances and my own tendency to allow myself to drift and trust my luck to carry me to the best destination.Here is a mini autobiography:I passed my matriculation exam in 1966 from a good English medium school with Distinction. My favourite subject was English. I loved writing and my essays in school were hand-picked by my English teacher and read out to the entire class. I toyed with the idea of doing BA (journalism) and joining Times of India, my favourite newspaper at the time but my mother's shocked looks and my friends ridiculing me made me drop the idea like a hot potato."Arts? Yuck! Those courses are for girls whiling away their time before getting married! Do you want to end up teaching English in the same school! Be a man! Blah blah blah"Under peer pressure and also parental guidance, I chose to do science at a fancied college (Elphinstone College in Mumbai) and spent an entire year postponing my career decision. I had several options open and was glad to simply bide my time.IIT was the buzz word then.Everyone was busy preparing for it. Coaching classes were having a field day. I did not attend any, but went for a crash one month course at the end just for getting that extra confidence.I believe that I had done well in the entrance exam but it was not good enough. I did not make it.My mom was determined to make me an engineer. Middle class families those days, never looked beyond CA/Medicine/Engineering. They of course preferred an IAS but they realized that the number of selected candidates was very few and the competition was from all over the country from students of all disciplines and felt that CA/Medicine/Engineering was a safer option to try.Having missed IIT, I tried for the "next best" option. I applied to a few regional engineering colleges (now called NITs) and also BITS Pilani.At REC Trichy I was offered Electrical Engineering and at BITS Pilani, where I just made it, I was offered the least fancied branch that is Civil Engineering.Tamil nadu was ablaze at that time The anti-Hindi agitation was in full swing. Stations were being burnt. Hindi signboards were being defaced. Colleges were closed. So I chose Bits Pilani.My mom and dad would have none of that. They wanted a 'Chemical Engineer' Son not a Civil engineer messing around with Sand and cement!I consoled them and told them (just to placate them and allow me to go to Pilani) that the course was of five years and the first two years was common to all and that I would do well and seek a change to a better branch in the third year when we would start our actual studies in the allotted branch of engineering)Reluctantly they let me go. I joined BITS Pilani in July 1967 after hearing a lot about the reputation of BITS and once I arrived there, I fell in love with the campus, hostel life and the facilities for extra curricular activities and the curriculum. One humanities subject was compulsory for all engineers each year and I chose to do courses in English and Advanced English, Indian history and culture, Public administration, Economics, and Industrial Psychology as electives in addition to my engineering subjects. This was a bold innovation by BITS Pilani at that time. No other college had this system in place.It was supposed to produce a "well rounded" personality and not a human automaton.My parents kept asking about my progress in getting a branch change. I kept stalling. I loved my life there at Pilani so much that I was becoming indifferent to what my major was. I then told them in my third year that I could not get my branch changed and I was liking my subject and would continue. They were disappointed but they left me in peace after that.I passed with distinction in Civil Engineering as my major, and also enjoyed a cosmopolitan Campus life, made many friends, improved my spoken Hindi, and got exposure to life in North India after 17 years of childhood and boyhood in Mumbai.In 1972, I came back to Mumbai and was offered two jobs. One was a poorly paid job as a sub editor for a technical magazine (Indian Concrete Journal) and another was for a Road Construction company as a supervisor. I rejected both. While waiting for better opportunities, I thought seriously about post-graduation. I had not had my fill of campus life. There was no Gate exam then and I was selected by University of Roorkee (now called IIT Roorkee) for a two year master's programme in Structures.I proceeded to Roorkee and was soon armed with a Master's degree in Structural engineering after another happy two- year stay in the Roorkee University campus. This time my morale was better. My scholarship (Rs 250 per month) enabled me not to depend on any remittances from parents. It was enough to meet my needs.What next? Everyone was appearing for all sorts of competitive entrance exams. Upsc, Hindusthan Steel Ltd and others, Services Selection Board etc. I appeared for the entrance exam conducted by HSL and passed with flying colours. They selected me for a company called MECON which was the new name for HSL's Central Engineering and Design Bureau and later launched as an independent company called Mecon, head quartered at Ranchi and reporting to the ministry of Steel and Mines. It was perhaps the largest consultancy organization in the country with about 2600 engineers of all disciplines and specialized in consultancy services for the Steel plant projects which were valued at several hundred crores of rupees.This happened on its own. I had no hand except to apply, pass the exam and wait. I simply accepted what came to me. Those days, jobs were scarce unlike today.They posted me at Bokaro Steel plant and my posting lasted 2 months. It was supposed to be an exposure to the steel plant structures. Mecon had opened a new office at Bangalore and after the training period, I was asked to march to Bangalore and report at this new office. This was in Oct 1974.So my arrival at Bangalore was not planned but simply fated.At Bangalore, without offering me any choice I was posted in the Structural section which dealt with total consultancy services for steel structures for Heavy Industrial Buildings. I joined at the junior-most Executive level as a Graduate Engineer Trainee and worked my way up and was involved in Analysis, Design, Drawings, Technical Specifications, Tender Scrutiny, Project Reports, Software development, Inspection and site supervision of Steel structures for Industrial Buildings, Commercial buildings and also Defense Establishments.I served for 28 long years and the last 6 years were as head of the same department that I had joined as a trainee in 1974.Those were the best years of my professional life. There was high job satisfaction and the kind of projects I was involved in were the envy of my friends. The pay was moderate but not bad. Considering that my wife worked in a bank, we had enough to lead a decent life. I could save well, educate my children well and also invest in a house in Bangalore and own a two wheeler and later a car. Life was smooth and incident free, job security was ensured. I got to tour extensively in India and was also sent on short postings to some places abroad including places like Korea and Finland.My lack of any planning for my career had in no way affected me.God had taken care of me till then.But….Nothing is permanent. In the late nineties, the company was facing bad times.Our core competence was no longer in demand. The steel Industry was going through a recession. We started accepting jobs from other sectors which paid a lot less and for which we were not suitable at all because our overheads were heavy.We started doing distasteful jobs at fees that were less than our expenditure simply to cut losses. To save money, perquisites were cut. Facilities taken for granted earlier like LTC, hotel and travel accommodation entitlements, loans for house building, cars medical and hospitalisation expense reimbursements, etc were all held in abeyance or reduced. I was no longer enjoying any job satisfaction. I had outgrown technical design work after being promoted to the position of Deputy General Manager and was saddled with administrative and non technical responsibilities.I was unhappy. After all these years, going to the office in the morning was a torture.From out of the blue the government introduced VRS . (Voluntary Retirement Scheme). I was the first to apply along with several colleagues. The company accepted the applications of many of them but sat on my application for a whole year and finally refused to release me but they would not put it in writing.The details are tedious to relate here but it finally ended in my submitting my resignation at the age of 50. I had 8 more years of productive service still left and had to forgo a lot of retirement benefits.Okay, till now, God planned for me.Now I had to plan for myself!During my service I had been receiving several offers from Head Hunters and HR consultants to leave my company and join the private sector. I had been spurning them.I now decided there was nothing to lose and accepted an offer from a new Management and software consultancy company, as the GM of a newly created division that was being set up to capitalize on a new business opportunity that had opened up in India consequent to the advent of the internet.This was Knowledge process outsourcing/ Business process outsourcing.The internet made it possible for many US companies to get many kinds of work done in India at low man-hour costs and delivered over the net. Medical transcription was among the earliest of these new businesses.Soon American Steel fabricators, Architects, and contractors found it expedient to off load their drawing preparation work, and other time consuming and laborious works to India where man hour cost was 1/7th of what it was in USA. After a few initial hiccups, the parent company in USA and the back end center in India would soon establish an equilibrium and the business flourished.I was taken on as GM and posted at Electronics City in Bangalore and I set up a team of 8 engineers and 22 draftsmen and headed this department and worked on this new business for 2 and half years and got a thorough exposure to this business, and its pitfalls, loopholes, sources for bagging assignments, quoting correct prices for executing assignments etc. how to chase payments, identify poor paymasters, good companies that pay on time, the tools, resources and software needed and the optimum manpower needed to run the business for a particular turnover and how to word a contract agreement fairly and safely, what kind of projects to avoid, however tempting the price, and what kind of projects to accept even if it meant compromising on our price, what kind of time schedule was feasible and which to turn down because it was not feasible.The work was of course not creative. That part was retained by the US Client. They offloaded only the grunt work, which took 90 percent of the time, to us, to keep their costs down. They paid us just half the price they would have to pay in America to get the job done there. We charged at least twice the price that we would have charged Indian customers for equivalent assignments in India. This was win-win situation for both. The time difference, around 12 hours made it possible to keep the project going on round the clock. We contacted each other on Yahoo/Microsoft messenger and later Skype in the mornings and evenings and there was heavy traffic in Emails, uploading and downloading of drawings and documents.They paid me twice of what I was getting in Mecon. But the working hours were long. I was constantly required to be online and in emergencies I would be asked to be available even at unearthly hours like 2:30 am!As I said before nothing is permanent. In this case too, the business soured after some time. Other companies too jumped in and the competition was so intense that our prices had to be reduced. Overhead costs rose, since this was an ISO company. Cost cutting, salary delays, extended working hours for the same salary contributed to mass resignations and I was left to find solutions. My requests for additional software licenses, better hardware, and new software that could greatly improve productivity were all turned down. After two and half years I realized that this business could not operate much longer with so much of overheads and restrictive procedures due to our being an ISO certified company.The time had come to plan my own career move. I believed I still had about 10 years of ability to work in me. I was in reasonably good health.I offered my resignation and decided that I would get into this business for myself, and not work for any one.This two and half year stint had given me an excellent exposure and I was brimming with confidence and simply raring to go.What was re-assuring was that I was at an age when all my debts were cleared. The house and car had been paid for. My daughter was married and settled in Usa. My son was in college with his career plans all chalked out and any funds he might need were kept safe and secure and reserved for him. My wife had opted for VRS from her bank and she offered to help me.I took the plunge.After all these years of contacts with American customers, I had a few who trusted me implicitly and they gave me small jobs initially and later larger and more ambitious assignments after I had convinced them that I was equipped with staff and software resources for handling them.Two trusted senior staff from the previous company I worked for did not want to continue there, after I left and resigned to throw in their lot with me. We recruited 12 new hands, fresh from college at salaries 10 percent more than what the open market was paying to freshers at that time. I initially rented office space close to my house while I modified my 2000 square feet house and demolished internal walls, and built an additional small hall on what was previously my terrace and soon set up an office in my own house and shifted my staff to my house. I moved my family to my newly purchased apartment a short distance away.At last! I was an entrepreneur! I gave jobs to others. I did not apply for jobs anymore! I was my own boss something I had not dreamt about a few years ago.The business ran well till 2008. I cleared all the loans I had taken for setting up the business and for buying hardware(19 personal computers, and two laptops) Software (8 Autocad licenses and 6 Tekla licenses) and two MS office licences and all the standard office furniture and fittings.Income had stabilized. I bought one more apartment as an investment and rented it out. I paid myself a decent salary starting with the salary I resigned on and soon drawing twice the salary. I enjoyed the luxury of having a driver and a live in maid at home and got my wife on board as a Co Director and paid her a salary and got all my non technical work done by her (like HR, recruitment, accounts, administration, supervising cleaning , purchase of office requirements and acting as counsellor for the employees most of whom were girls in their twenties. She also handled all contacts with my auditors and took care of paying all the taxes and handling payroll, leaving me free to concentrate on project execution, quality control and delivery on schedule and also training the newly recruited staff.My plans seemed to be working.My venture had stabilized. I was free from liabilities. I was feeling like a pilot who had finished the pre-flight formalities and had slowly piloted the plane till the end of the runway and had turned around was preparing for a take off and then soaring over the skies!Then Fate came back to taunt me!The 2008 sub-prime crisis in USA struck suddenly!My one fundamental mistake in marketing policy which was always haunting me at the back of my mind and which I had been ignoring finally caught up with me. This mistake was putting all my eggs in the American basket. I never pursued Indian Clients, or Australian clients. Indian clients paid far less but work during difficult times was assured. I did not pursue Australian clients since they paid far less than the Americans and they asked for more work and my team was less familiar with their codes of practice and were completely at home with the American specs and codes.The sub-prime crises in USA brought several projects to a halt. The Construction Industry in USA was seriously affected. My clients frantically called to cancel contracts. Some paid a token amount for work already done as compensation. Others did not pay at all and said they would pay if they were paid by their customer who pleaded that he would pay when the bank released the funds for the project. I was left dangling at the bottom of the food chain. I could not tell my staff that I would pay their salaries only if I got paid. I kept the boat sailing somehow by putting in some of my own emergency funds but I realized it was a losing battle. The crisis, I knew would last at least two years, may be even more, and I did not have the capability to rough it out unless I was willing to pledge all my immovable property assets. My wife firmly vetoed that idea.Then another personal disaster struck me for which I was totally unprepared. A sudden heart attack followed by angioplasty, then severe internal bleeding due to drugs taken post angioplasty which caused me to fall unconscious, and be rushed back to the ICU, followed by a severe attack of some strange kind of arthritis which kept me in bed for six months, totally unable to walk, all hit me in quick succession between 2010 and 2011 and I knew I was licked!A good Samaritan turned up in the nick of time. He was a big entrepreneur running a bigger business with a greater turnover in Andhra Pradesh. He sold his business and moved to Bangalore and wanted to do something smaller. He sought me out through mutual contacts and bought out my company at Par. I was glad to offer it to him. This happened in 2011 and fate has been kind to me after that!I am now leading a quiet retired life. I help my old organization when they invite me to conduct campus interviews for recruitment and for conducting orientation training of the new recruits. I divide my time between living in USA and Bangalore.Regards and best wishes to all Quorans and thank you for your patience in reading this long story.GV

EPC stands for Engineering, Procurement, Construction and is a prominent form of contracting agreement in the construction industry. The engineering and construction contractor will carry out the detailed engineering design of the project, procure all the equipment and materials necessary, and then construct to deliver a functioning facility or asset to their clients (NHAI in this case). Companies that deliver EPC Projects are commonly referred to as EPC Contractors.Need for EPC contracts in NHAI :National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had hitherto been building roads through the conventional item rate contracts where the Government provides the detailed design as well as the estimates of quantities for different items of work (Bill of Quantities).Payments to the contractor are made on the basis of measurements of the work done in respect of each item. Experience shows that item rate contracts are prone to excessive time and cost overruns. The reasons for their poor performance include inadequate project preparation and estimation coupled with allocation of construction risks largely to the Government/NHAI. For these reasons, the item rate mode of contracting has been abandoned in the developed world.Advantages of adopting EPC Contracts in NHAI :The objective is to ensure implementation of the project to specified standards with a fair degree of certainty relating to costs and time while transferring the construction risks to a private sector contractor.The EPC approach relies on assigning the responsibility for investigations, design and construction to the contractor for a lump sum price determined through competitive bidding.The EPC Agreement specifies the required design and performance standards and allows the Contractor to design and construct the project using best practices and innovation to optimise on efficiency and economy as compared to the rigidity of the item rate contract that relies on a single design provided by the Government.The Contractor also has full freedom to plan the construction schedule for efficient use of its manpower, equipment and other resources while payments are linked to specified stages of construction as compared to payment for individual items/ units under the item rate contracts.Awarding contract for a lump sum price ensures predictability and financial discipline, both for the contractor and the Government.Clearly stated obligations and risks of the respective parties help in achieving timely completion of the project while minimising disputes.The technical parameters proposed in the Agreement are based mainly on output specifications. This would provide the requisite flexibility to the contractor in evolving and adopting innovative designs without compromising on the quality of service for users.The Contract Price is a fixed lump sum amount for construction of the project highway. The Contract Price is subject to adjustment on account of changes in the cost of inputs, changes in law, or changes in scope of the project.The Contractor shall ensure safe, smooth and uninterrupted flow of traffic, and carry out routine maintenance including prompt repairs of potholes, cracks, joints, drains, embankments, structures, pavement markings, lighting, road signs and other traffic control devices during the maintenance period. The agreement lays down quantifiable maintenance requirements and performance standards.Projects risks such as soil conditions and weather or commercial and technical risks relating to design, construction and maintenance have been assigned to the Contractor. The Government accepts its liability to pay damages to the Contractor for any delays in handing over the land, Railways approvals for bridges on railway lines, environment clearances and shifting of utilities.The EPC agreement specifies the dates on which different sections of the land will be handed over to the Contractor. It defines the scope of the project highway with precision and predictability to enable the Contractor to determine its costs and obligations. It also lays down a ceiling of 10 percent of contract price to cater for any changes in the scope of project, the cost of which the Government will bear.The Contractor shall carry out survey and investigations and also develop designs and drawings in conformity with the specifications and standards laid down in the Agreement. It will get these checked by a proof consultant and a safety consultant who are to be appointed with the approval of the Government. Government’s engineer shall review the design and drawings to ensure that these conform to the scope of the project, design standards and specifications.A provision has been made for damages which the Contractor shall pay to Government for not achieving the prescribed milestones. Government will pay bonus to the Contractor for completion of the project highway before the scheduled completion date.The Contractor shall be paid 1.5% of the contract price for the first year of maintenance and 2% for the second year of maintenance. Maintenance work is to be inspected by the Government’s engineer once every month, and deductions made for failure or defects in maintenance.The EPC agreement contains the requisite provisions for dealing with force majeure events. In particular, it provides protection to the Contractor against political actions that may have adverse effect on the timely completion of the projectTermination payments have been quantified precisely. Political force majeure and defaults by the Authority are proposed to qualify for adequate compensatory payments to the contractor and thus guard against any discriminatory or arbitrary action by the Government.Monitoring and supervision of construction and maintenance is proposed to be undertaken through an Engineer (a qualified firm) that will be selected by the Authority through a transparent process.A simple and rational method for estimating interim payments to the Contractor has been provided in the Agreement. Works have been divided into four categories, namely, road works, major bridges, structures and other works. Each item of work has been further sub-divided into stages and payment will be made for each completed stage of work.Though normally a defects liability period of one year is specified in most contracts, a defects liability period of two years has been specified in the Agreement in order to provide additional comfort to the Government.Thus, EPC Agreement incorporates international best practices and embodies an enabling contractual framework for construction of highways in an efficient, economical and competitive environment. It will minimise, if not eliminate, the time and cost over-runs characteristic of the extant item rate contracts.