Simpson Strong-Tie Signs On as a Founding Member

Pittsburgh, Pa. - BuildIQ®, the leading online provider of Best Practices in Homebuilding™, has launched the Best Practices® Community program –to better connect homebuilders to information supplied by leading industry product manufacturers and service providers. Simpson Strong-Tie is one of a handful of companies that has signed on as a founding member.

"We realize that builders are pressed for time. They need answers quickly from a source they can trust," says Michael Dickens, founder and CEO of BuildIQ. "Builders need access to better knowledge, information, and tools to build a higher quality home, but they typically don't have the time and resources to assemble such a collection of Best Practices® themselves."

"The goal of the program is to give builders a convenient place to find, share, and discuss Best Practices for building a higher quality home," says David Ulicne, BuildIQ's managing director. "We have invited leading product suppliers and service providers that we believe are the best in the industry to become founding members of the program with the intent to share their Best Practice information in BuildIQ's online products."

Builders can access industry Best Practice information through:

• BuildIQ Search (www.buildiq.com). Builders using BuildIQ Search get relevant, high-quality results from our websites and the outside world. The search tool saves builders time by providing them with great information that isn't buried within thousands of results.
• BuildIQ Jobsite (jobsite.buildiq.com). Jobsite provides insightful information to homebuilders on topics that are critical to their business performance and the quality of their homes. The Jobsite News e-newsletter broadcasts the Best Practices message to the industry.
• BuildIQ Toolbelt (toolbelt.buildiq.com). Toolbelt is the place homebuilders go to find solutions to top warranty issues that are costing them millions of dollars to fix. Toolbelt contains a vast collection of step-by-steps, checklists, spec sheets, and inspection tools that builders can print and share.
• BuildIQ University (www.buildiqu.com). BuildIQ University provides online training courses in homebuilding Best Practices to help builder teams increase performance, manage risk, and save wasted dollars. We have a growing curriculum of courses that thousands of building professionals have completed.

"Simpson Strong-Tie is proud to be a founding member of the Best Practices Community program," said Mike Moran, vice president of builder programs for the company. "For the past several decades, Simpson Strong-Tie has committed the resources to make training builders a priority in order to help improve product installations and to reduce the cost of construction. We are excited about the opportunity to work with BuildIQ to help the industry when it needs it most."

Currently, Simpson Strong-Tie, the Kohler Company, and Hearth & Home Technologies have become founding members of the program. BuildIQ is working closely with each company to identify and publish their Best Practice training, tools, and information to the BuildIQ family of products and websites.

If other companies are interested in becoming members and benefiting from program, they can go to http://community.buildiq.com for more information. BuildIQ always welcomes those interested in sharing homebuilding best practices.