Southwest Elementary School saves with Submittal Exchange™

"Submittal Exchange is an enormous time saver, paper saver, labor saver, and it is saving a lot of money too."
- Rebecca Welsh, Project Manager, DeWitt & Associates

Springfield, MO - The project team for Southwest Elementary School at Golden in Springfield, Missouri has saved time, money, hassle, and paper by using the Submittal Exchange system for submitting, reviewing, and tracking shop drawings and construction submittals electronically. The new $8 million elementary school started in October 2007 and is set to be completed in summer 2009.

The team has noticed that the project has benefited in multiple ways since they began using Submittal Exchange. DeWitt & Associates, the general contractor on the project, is a commercial contractor based out of southwest Missouri. "Submittal Exchange is an enormous time saver, paper saver, labor saver, and it is saving a lot of money too. Plus the technical support that comes with it is great," states Rebecca Welsh, Project Manager with DeWitt & Associates. "Normally we get stacks of eight copies of every submittal and it goes from one office to the next. It takes a lot of time, but Submittal Exchange has cut down a lot of the time that it takes. We can even turn stuff around in a day if we need to!"

"Submittal Exchange has helped improve the communication between the team. The timing of everything, especially the submittal aspect, has sped up significantly."
- Neal Suntken, Project Architect, BCDM

Beringer Ciaccio Dennell Mabrey (BCDM) is a full service architectural firm with offices in Nebraska, Iowa, and Arizona. Neal Suntken, Project Architect with BCDM's Omaha office, says "This project isn't local for us, and Submittal Exchange has helped improve the communication between the team. The timing of everything, especially on the submittal aspect, has sped up significantly."

Nelson Link, Construction Manager with BCDM, comments "Submittal Exchange saves a lot of time from other administrative staff during the process. Submittals would go through multiple hands in the traditional process, but with Submittal Exchange that isn't necessary. The speed and communication improvement is great, and I like doing everything electronically because of all of the paper work that is avoided."

The team has also appreciated the way Submittal Exchange can be customized to fit their needs with construction correspondence features such as RFIs and automatic forms and transmittals. "Submittal Exchange is tailored to the way we like things to look when they are finally getting transmitted," comments Link. "We like submittals to look a certain way with our cover sheets, and I think the website transmittal feature is great. We really like it!"

"You can, at a glance, see all of the RFIs and submittals to cross reference. They are accessible from the road on a laptop, from my office, or even a job trailer."
- Nelson Link, Construction Manager, BCDM

"We've recently started to implement the RFI features and that has helped us to avoid delays from using the normal paper trail," adds Suntken. "Reducing the time processing RFIs and submittals using the Submittal Exchange system is great because it is easy to see who has something and where it is at in the process."

"I like the fact that everything is there electronically. You can, at a glance, see all the RFIs and submittals to cross reference. They are accessible from the road on a laptop, from my office, or even a job trailer," says Link. "The increased communication and accessibility to information is there. The other day I was able to pull up a submittal on my laptop from my car. It was right there at my finger tips."

When asked about recommending Submittal Exchange to other professionals, the users all unanimously said they will. "I rant and rave about Submittal Exchange all of the time, and I try to convince every project into using it," comments Welsh. "I think all projects should go this route because Submittal Exchange is such a time and money saver!"