over managing partner roles in Prince George and Edmonton. Stackd is now available as an integrated subscription-based software solution for other engineering firms, but it was originally created solely with the goal of facilitating the growth of Access Engineering. The idea for it came from one of the first employees Bruce hired after taking over. “He said if you really want to grow this company, if you’re really an entrepreneur, you need an ERP,” Bruce recalls. “And I said ‘That sounds great, but how do you go about that?’ He said ‘Well, first you need to hire a software developer.’” That employee had a connection with a developer who attended a technical college in Prince George but was living in Brazil. Bruce reached out to him to ask some questions and learned he was interested in moving back to Canada. Access Engineering sponsored his work visa and he came over and started developing the system architecture. Previously, Bruce says Access Engineering had a pretty “archaic” way of documenting things. “We had a blue blinder on the front counter where we would take a piece of paper out of a photocopied pile of papers and write our new project information so that the bookkeeper could put the project in the accounting software and track the invoices,” he explains. “It was really stumble-y and old school. So the first thing we needed to do was put together a project list and incorporate a client and contact list.” Their software developer was able to put together a piece of software with that functionality. From there, they kept refining the software, building new modules and adding new functionality. Eventually, they had a proprietary system that they owned and worked really well for them. They believed the system could also work well for other companies, so they branded the system Stackd and formed DesignTIME Solutions in order to commercialize it. MAY 2025
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