QESTLab™ for PSI – World’s Largest Implementation

(1 October 2007) Spectra QEST announces that Professional Service Industries, Inc. will implement QESTLab™ throughout its United States operations. Spectra QEST believes that this is the largest construction materials and soils testing LIMS implementation in the world, based on a non-custom, commercially available system.

Professional Service Industries, Inc. (better known as PSI) is one of the United States’ largest consulting engineering and testing firms, operating more than 80 laboratories US-wide.

Distinguished as a leader in environmental consulting, geotechnical engineering, and construction testing services, PSI is recognized in the USA as an expert firm in several disciplines, including construction services, materials testing, roof consulting and asbestos management.

McGraw-Hill Construction’s Engineering News Record (ENR) ranks PSI as one of North America's largest consulting engineering firms. It is also one of the oldest, having commenced operations over 100 years ago. Today PSI employs thousands of skilled personnel in 125 offices across North America.

Some time ago, PSI recognized the tremendous benefits a top-shelf, specialist construction materials and soils Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) would bring to the business. The firm has experienced some of these benefits following the internal development—over a decade ago—of FOS, a custom software system for the management of field and office data.

FOS was used successfully for a number of years in many of the PSI offices, but as is often the case with custom, internally developed systems, it was expensive to maintain, was missing some important LIMS features and had limited coverage of the test methods performed by PSI in its laboratories.

Following an international search, the QESTLab™ system was selected as the platform of choice moving forward.
PSI commissioned Spectra QEST to analyse its operations and report back on how best to implement the software, what integration would be required and what additional development would be necessary to meet the requirements of such a large implementation.

Spectra QEST was also asked to contribute specialist resources towards the project management, training and roll out requirements of the project. As a result, Dirk Janek (Director, Technology & Products) spent three months with PSI early in 2007, followed by Michael Howland (Implementation & Support Assistant Manager) who is working out of PSI’s headquarters in Chicago, where he will remain for the duration of the project.

PSI is a dynamic company continually expanding. QESTLab™ is to be deployed in 87 laboratories throughout the US.

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