BSD SpecLink Helps Drive Quality and Innovation at Coleman-Johnston-Clyma, Inc.

In 1996 Larry Johnston, President and a Principal, decided that Coleman-Johnston-Clyma, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, needed to dramatically speed up editing tasks and to reduce specification production time without compromising accuracy or integrity. SpecLink proved to be the answer. According to Johnston, "SpecLink freed up the time spent on the `busy,' nonproductive decisions we were struggling with. Those functions have now been automated within SpecLink so that the staff can concentrate on the real issues of what materials and methods are best for the project at hand." With minimal investment and training, CJC began to see immediate time-saving results. "This was very important to us because of the volume of project work we had to manage while trying to implement and learn a new system," Johnston said. "We found the software easy to learn and very user friendly. My staff and I trained ourselves and were fairly productive in about two weeks. SpecLink is so easy to use, anyone can learn to use it in a fairly short time."

Initial set up and training were only the beginning of the time savings realized by CJC. The "point and click" method of selecting materials (versus deleting) made it easy to set up, manage, and change their "office master." SpecLink will automatically include related text and exclude incompatible options, but allows the user to make changes at will. An unexpected advantage of SpecLink that CJC discovered over time was how it can be used as a training tool. Young interns with the firm used the "office master" that was set up, giving them the basic elements needed for common project specs. This allowed them to learn and became a basis for questions to further their understanding. It also gave the more experienced designers more possibilities (choices and selections) than they were able to see with other systems.

Since making the switch to SpecLink and using it on over 100 projects, CJC estimates they experience savings of 40 to 70 percent, depending on the project. "Utilizing SpecLink for all of our projects is almost like having a spec consultant on our team," summarizes Johnston. "The cost of the SpecLink subscription is well worth the investment as it has effectively increased our productivity by significantly reducing the man-hours required to write a spec and, at the same time, has greatly improved our accuracy. There are so many ways that SpecLink saves time, and in our business, time is money!"