NEWSLETTER

A Message From Our CEO - The State of Building Systems Design, Inc.

It is hard to deny that the US economy—and indeed the world economy—is in recession. Nevertheless, at BSD we finished our fiscal year 2008 on September 30 with a respectable increase in product sales over the previous year. We remained profitable and continued this positive performance through our fiscal 2009 first quarter. We hope our customers and partners are managing to weather the storm as well. We believe our products, comprising both software and data, are high quality productivity tools that become even more useful in a difficult economy. We continue to strive to help architectural and engineering offices become more efficient while producing quality construction specifications and cost estimates.

BSD has grown over the past year to reach the largest staff of employees and consultants in our 26-year history. We do not expect layoffs; on the contrary, we are in fact looking to fill a couple of empty positions. But we have taken certain precautions and will remain vigilant in the face of this turbulent environment. We are expecting to spend at least 10% of our revenue on new product development this year as we have been doing for the past few years. We are a strong and vibrant company preparing to demonstrate a production release of our new SpecLink-E (SLE) product and a LinkMan-E (LME) product approaching its first beta release at the annual AIA and CSI conventions. We look forward to final releases of these products before the fiscal year is out.

New Product Development Report

There is a complete review of the purpose, design, and functionality of our forthcoming new products in the Winter Quarter LinkLine Newsletter, which can be viewed by clicking here. We have not moved forward as quickly on SpecLink-E as we had hoped, but we remain true to our objectives. Goals for the forthcoming release include exceptional functionality for improved specifications production, improved quality of features, and safe use in production. We continue to work toward achieving all these goals and will not release SLE until the quality level of the software meets our standards.

Although it will be production-ready, we refer to this initial release of SLE as Beta 2 rather than Release 1.0 for several reasons. One, we’ve already done some sixty-odd “builds” of this product for in-house and consultant use in design review and testing, so the next release will be well beyond version 1.0 (the actual build version is 1.5.7.1 at this writing). Second, there are some features that are not yet fully developed, including Internet-based data updates delivery, which will require a subsequent release of the server and client software. This subsequent release will be the completed version whose delivery will follow as soon as possible after the Beta 2. We also call this release a Beta because we want it to be clear that this is the first field release of the production product.

We have a large, dedicated staff working to complete SpecLink-E. We will feature the SpecLink-E product at the AIA Convention in San Francisco in late April, and our goal is to have the first production software on media and available via download before the convention for distribution to those customers who have enrolled in the Beta feedback program. If you are a SpecLink+ subscriber and would like to participate in the production Beta program but have not yet registered, please send an email to support@bsdsoftlink.com with text that references the SpecLink-E Beta 2 program in the subject line. We will be happy to send you information on how to participate.

Future Developments Summary

After the delivery of SpecLink-E, we will focus our efforts on the release of LinkMan-E, a product that will initially support BIM-related interoperability between Revit Architecture 2009 and SpecLink-E. A subsequent release of LME is expected to support interoperability with BSD’s CostLink/AE product. Our goal is release of the initial LME product before our fiscal year-end in September.

BSD also provides the software, fulfillment and technical support for AGC’s DocuBuilder system, which is used to deliver the ConsensusDOCS contract documents and forms to the construction community. ConsensusDOCS documents are published by an affiliated group of 22 of the construction industry’s top trade associations. The ConsensusDOCS group is currently updating documents and forms to be published in Release 6.3 of DocuBuilder, and BSD expects to put this release together for AGC in the second quarter of 2009.

Finally, we of course have an ongoing list of candidate features for addition to SpecLink-E. Larger tasks on this list include support for tracking  which individuals have  worked on specific SLE documents and what kinds of changes were made. We would also like to extend the functionality of the “office master” concept, so projects can be more easily updated following changes to the office master.

Thank you for your interest in BSD products. We look forward to your feedback, which provides the cornerstone of our product development cycle. If we can answer any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@bsdsoftlink.com.

Best Regards,                                                      

Building Systems Design, Inc.

John R. Witherspoon, CEO

February 9, 2009