Bridge Center for Youth benefits from the use of
Submittal Exchange™

"Submittal Exchange is a real time saver. I don't have to spend the time sending three, five, or even ten sets of drawings out and trying to get everyone else to return them."
- Jim Smith, Project Manager, Kraus-Anderson Construction Company

Minneapolis, MN - Minneapolis, MN - In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Bridge Center for Youth, a shelter and support center for homeless and runaway youth, completed construction and officially opened in June 2008. The $4 million youth center is the first 24-hour residential shelter of its kind in the Minneapolis area. The project utilized the Submittal Exchange system for exchanging, reviewing, and tracking shop drawings and construction submittals electronically.

The project team found that the time they saved by processing 130+ submittals electronically thought the Submittal Exchange system could then be used to focus on other aspects of the project. Nate Golin, a designer for Cermak Rhoades Architects, the 12 person professional architecture firm out of Saint Paul that designed the project, says "Using Submittal Exchange is a great experience, and it has saved us a lot of time in what could have been a very difficult project had we not been using Submittal Exchange. We are able to communicate with the contractors to get things turned around quicker."

OPN Architects is an architecture firm with offices in Cedar Falls and Des Moines, Iowa, and offers a full range of architectural services. "Submittal Exchange works great with contractors and we have had a good experience with it," comments Susan Bowersox, Project Manager with OPN. "Submittal Exchange works really well for moving things quickly and knowing exactly where those things are at and what their status is."

"Submittal Exchange frees up a lot of time to focus more on reviewing the products and making sure that we are getting what we specified. The time that is saved allows us to do more quality control and to make sure all of the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed."
- Nate Golin, Designer, Cermak Rhoades Architects

Kraus-Anderson Construction Company, the general contractor on the project, employs over 400 office staff divided amongst eight offices spread throughout the Midwest, four of which are in the Twin Cities. "Submittal Exchange is a real time saver. I don't have to go spend time sending three, five, or even ten sets of drawings out and trying to get everyone else to return them," comments Jim Smith, Project Manager with Kraus-Anderson, who has 20 years of experience in the industry. "If there are any changes on the drawings you just have to change them on one set. You don't have to make sure that your transfer all of those corrections to multiple copies. It's a one step process," explains Faye Olausen, Assistant Project Manager.

The team has found the logging features of Submittal Exchange to be very useful in both maintaining organization and accountability. "Using Submittal Exchange, I didn't have to manually create a shop drawing log, so that was one less thing that I had to do for the project," said Smith. "The online log is the best thing. Making it viewable by all users is great, and keeping it updated ensures that you can always be up to speed by checking the site. It is the basis of the whole system," says Golin. "Submittal Exchange streamlined everything. We are starting to re-evaluate our whole submittal procedure based on this system."

Submittal Exchange frees up a lot of time to focus more on reviewing the products and making sure that we are getting what we specified. The time that is saved allows us to do more quality control and to make sure all of the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed," adds Golin.

"The electronic tracking and quick submittal status review are two major benefits from using Submittal Exchange."
- Larry Prinds, AIA, CSI, CCS, Project Architect, Cermak Rhoades Architects

While using Submittal Exchange versus the traditional paper method, the team has also noticed a significant increase in the speed of the submittal process. "Using Submittal Exchange along with the use of Bluebeam PDF Revu speeds up the submittal process," says Larry Prinds, Project Architect with Cermark Rhoades who has almost 30 years of experience in the industry.

"As far as reviewing documents, the efficiency and speed of Submittal Exchange is leaps and bounds better than doing everything by hand," states Golin. Prinds adds, "The electronic tracking and quick submittal status review are two major benefits from using Submittal Exchange."