I’m getting ready to launch a new workers’ compensation calculator and I could use your help. ((Photo Credit: Davide Reppucci via Compfight)) I still need a few volunteers to help me test a permanent disability, life pension, and total permanent disability COLA commutation calculator. Right now I need a few applicant attorneys, defense attorneys, and claims examiners.
You’re probably just here to download the latest workers’ compensation case about the Cost of Living Adjustment and State Average Weekly Wage increases. ((Photo courtesy of Sister72)) ((I refuse to apologize for that pun.)) I’m not going to hold you in suspense – here’s the download link:
[download id=”22″]
Obviously, you need to read the entire decision for yourself. Here’s my oversimplification of the case:
Whenever the injured worker is due life pension payments for injuries on or after 1/1/2003, you calculate those benefits, whenever they are due, by increasing them according to the yearly increases in the state average weekly wage starting on 1/1/2004.
Still having trouble understanding the impact of this case? Well, you could try my XYZZXSJO2 calculator to tell you what the life pension rate should be during a given year. (Remember, this just tells you the rate – it is not a commutation calculator. These are still in the works).
A company once told me someone had offered to build permanent disability calculators for their website in three months for $7,500. One said six months and $20,000. Recently, another suggested it would take them a year and $40,000. My response is usually some variation on “You’ve got to take that deal. You’re wasting your time talking to me.”
It’s no big secret that building a great product takes a lot of work. The important thing to remember is that just because something is easy-to-use, that doesn’t mean its easy-to-make. ((Visit the link for a PDF of a cut-and-fold iPhone. Thanks Gizmodo!))
Difficult-to-make iPhone
Let’s take the iPhone for example. Everyone will concede its an easy phone to use. However, it was released more than two years ago on 6/29/2007. ((Wikipedia link.)) In that time the other players – BlackBerry, LG, Nokia, and Palm have all been trying to catch up. If this easy-to-use phone were easy-to-build everyone would have their own version.
Look, there’s no special magic to building a website like this. Really, anyone can do it. All you have to do is learn the calculations inside-and-out, deconstruct the math involved in the various calculations, learn some client and server side programming languages, learn a content management system, make it all work together, keep current on changes in the law, start all over again each time the law changes, and earn the respect of the workers’ compensation community. Once done, you’ll have your very own workers’ compensation calculator website!
To return to the lesson of the iPhone, building a touch screen phone that can play music and surf the web is totally doable. Doing it right is another matter entirely.
