Kingdom Design Group Streamlines Specifications with Deltek Specpoint

An Interview with John Graham, Principal and Co-Founder at Kingdom Design Group

Kingdom Design Group is a Colorado based, full-service, licensed architecture firm founded by Seth Emerson and John Graham. The firm’s vision of passionate belief, purposeful design and innovative technology helps bring their client’s vision to life.

Kingdom Design Group uses the latest design technologies, including Deltek Specpoint, to automate time-intensive processes, save time and accelerate project delivery. Discover how John Graham, Principal and Co-Founder of Kingdom Design Group, maximizes Deltek Specpoint to gain firm wide efficiencies and improve specification accuracy for better built projects.

Balancing the Evolving Demands of High-Growth Mode

Bringing in new work while handling the daily ins and outs of running an architecture firm – especially in high-growth mode - requires a combination of talent, skill, team effort and the right tools. This is especially the case when taking on new work in which technical knowledge is as important as good design.

Looking at ways to make processes more efficient, save time and leverage built-in industry standards to make specification writing easier, led John to Specpoint. John finds immense value using Specpoint as it combines the latest in technology with the industry marquee guide specifications, AIA MasterSpec®, for one tool that gets the job done seamlessly.

According to John, “the software allows targeted customization, so you can delete what doesn’t apply while adding your own sections.” The software also includes a comprehensive database of more than 900 master guide sections organized by practice-specific libraries. Equally as important to John is that AIA MasterSpec is written by licensed design professionals who advise on content direction.

Building Smarter Designs More Efficiently

With the vast amount of building products in the market, it’s challenging to stay current on the latest product offerings, let alone specifications.

Specpoint makes it is easy to find the best products to achieve design goals with the ability to search, sort and filter product characteristics and performance properties. In addition to the product properties, there is a lot of information about the product manufacturer itself. While there are times John has certain products in mind to specify ahead of time, being able to research and select product manufacturers within Specpoint has led to smarter product choices. John shares that “If you need to become more familiar with a particular manufacturer and learn more about them and the product, all the information is available in the product detail pages.”

Since the product manufacturers are vetted prior to being listed in Specpoint, this takes the concern out of specifying and according to John, “someone else has put their stamp of approval on it ahead of time.” This is especially the case where John may not have experience with a particular product or manufacturer, so it's nice to be able to lean on experts to verify that these products meet the AIA MasterSpec standards.

Improving Design Accuracy and Reducing Errors

Most of the time, specifications are developed as individual components. Specifying in an assembly-based format helps to better manage information. There is no need to translate that assembly into individual components, which may lead to omissions or errors within the specifications.

John explains how specifying individual components can be problematic: “If you take an exterior cement plaster wall, think of how many unique sections that is. There could be as many as eight sections. Managing that one assembly and translating it into eight individual sections doesn’t make sense. This approach can lead to errors within the specifications and potentially result in change orders.”

John adds that “you can easily navigate the element tree of assemblies, families and product types to find everything in Specpoint.” Decisions on product type automates the selection process of options within a family, which results in producing project manuals more efficiently and accurately.

Taking an assembly-based approach to developing specifications, results in a better understanding of the construction elements required to meet the overall project performance and design requirements.

Creating Smoother Communication and Collaboration

Many architecture and engineering (A&E) firms, including Kingdom Design Group, find that communication is at the core of project collaboration. When collaboration does not occur, challenges arise including wasted time, budget overruns, design errors, change orders, and the need to redo work.

With Specpoint, John can easily adjust as design decisions unfold without affecting the project delivery. This means that multiple people can be working on the specification at the same time. John shares that “my business partner and I divide and conquer, and our changes are automatically updated – making the collaboration process much smoother.”

An added benefit of Specpoint is having project data at your fingertips with the ability to transfer specifications from project to project. That means for new projects, John doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time – he can easily start a new project without having to start from scratch.

John also shared that “being able to work on a project where it’s not necessary to be logged into the office folder system is helpful.” He adds that “as cloud-based software, Specpoint ensures we are always sourcing the latest version of AIA MasterSpec.”