The First Principle of Fairness
"The client should pay a fair price for the product he receives."

The Second Principle of Fairness
"The company should provide a fair product for the price it receives."

1st Corollary to the Principles of Fairness
"Anytime that a client parts with his money, he will think it is unfair."

2nd Corollary to the Principles of Fairness
"Anytime the client has expectations of the company, the company will think it is unfair."

3rd Corollary to the Principles of Fairness
"Buyers of services complain louder than buyers of goods because services are transparent to the final user."

4th Corollary to the Principles of Fairness
"The consulting engineer's bread and butter is the advice he gives his client. Just because the client doesn't want to listen to his advice doesn't mean he shouldn't charge for it."

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The Principle of Competition
"Because there is always someone out there who works faster and cheaper, competition requires that a company give the client what he wants, at the price he wants, or the client will do business with someone faster and cheaper."

1st Corollary to the Principle of Competition
"A company must keep business out of the hands of its competition by working faster and cheaper, even if it has to go broke to do it."

2nd Corollary to the Principle of Competition
"In a perfectly competitive world, the operational definition of victory is not how much money a company makes, but how many of its competitors go bankrupt before it does by working fast and cheap."

3rd Corollary to the Principle of Competition
"Another way of describing fast and cheap is prostitution."

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The Principle of Continuous Quality Improvement
"If continuous quality improvements are required for a company's survival, then management will assume that there is no limit on how much quality can be improved."

Corollary to the Principle of Quality Improvement
"A policy of continuous quality improvement carries an implied client expectation that he will ultimately get something for nothing."

The Principle of Efficiency Improvement
"If continuous efficiency improvements are required for a company's survival, then management will assume that there is no theoretical limit on how much efficiency can be improved."

Corollary to the Principle of Efficiency Improvement
"A policy of continuous efficiency improvement carries an implied client expectation that he will ultimately get everything for nothing."

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The Principle of the Parsimonious Client
"Clients hate parting with their money because they think it is unfair. The client always wants something for nothing."

The Principle of Appeasement
"Since producing something for nothing is a logical impossibility, a company must give the client the next best thing: a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts."

The Principle of Equivocation
"Since the whole cannot logically be greater than its parts, then the 'whole' referred to in the Principle of Appeasement is really a 'hole' that is used to bury the parts of the employees who did not survive the massacre at the project finale."

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The 1st Principle of the Occult
"An employee who achieves all project objectives assigned by management has done so with the help of Satan."

Corollary to the 1st Principle of the Occult
"Satan has only a minimal interest in the soul of a man so shallow that he would barter it away for a successful engineering project. Such a man deserves a fate worse than Hell, but such a fate is unavailable at this time."

The 2nd Principle of the Occult
"Most impediments to project progress are placed there by Satan."

1st Corollary to the 2nd Principle of the Occult
"Since the client thinks that Satan is a myth, he will not pay for scope changes."

2nd Corollary to the 2nd Principle of the Occult
"The company thinks that most clients are Satan."

The 3rd Principle of the Occult
"The company considers all issues on which the project scope is silent to be outside the project scope. The client considers all issues on which the project scope is silent to be implied by the scope."

Corollary to the 3rd Principle of the Occult
"If an employee of the company has specialized knowledge that may be useful to the client, the client will assume that any problem that this employee can solve is within the original project scope, whether the employee is working on the project or not."

The 4th Principle of the Occult
"If the project gets done, it is because the hourly employees at the engineering firm have conspired with the hourly employees at the client's facility to achieve the project's goals despite the best efforts of both companies' management to manage the project. The subversive activity on the part of the hourly employees is completely transparent to management."

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The Principle of the Single Solution
"Every engineering problem has one and only one solution that works at a fair price."

Corollary to the Principle of the Single Solution
"Expensive solutions to problems are obvious. Cheap solutions are obscure. A cheap solution plus the time it takes to find it costs twice as much as the obvious solution enacted properly'"

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The Principle of 20/20 Foresight
"Since every project has a final form that will exist after construction and startup, the competent engineer is operationally defined as the one who goes directly to that final form without consideration of any intervening forms."

Corollary to the Principle of 20/20 Foresight
"Being proactive means that defenses against charges of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance are in place before the work begins."

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The Principle of Client/Engineer Concurrence
"In applying the Principle of 20/20 Foresight, the client and the engineer will never see the final form of the project the same way, even after it is up and running."

Corollary to the Principle of Client/Engineer Concurrence
"For a statement to be considered unambiguous, it must have three or fewer degrees of freedom of interpretation."

The Principle of Parsimonious Contemplation
"Since only one solution to a problem can be selected and implemented, engineers should not waste time contemplating alternative solutions that will ultimately be rejected."

The Principle of Persona Non Gratis
"Projects with tight budgets and difficult timetables are usually given to employees that management considers expendable."

The Principle of Shifting Sands
"Engineering issues that the client claims are set in stone usually suffer from considerable freeze damage before the end of the project."