Alpine Investors V SBIC, LP (Alpine), announced today that it has purchased Salt Lake City-based ARCOM, a leader in AEC software solutions that integrate building specification content.
ARCOM is a strategic partner to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and maintains and distributes the organization’s AIA MasterSpec content, which is used by 88 percent of the top architectural and engineering firms in the United States.
“The U.S. non-residential construction market, which is just now starting to reap the tremendous benefits brought by technology, is forecast to grow for the next decade,” said Mark Strauch, a partner at Alpine and now a board member at ARCOM. “Our market research quickly identified ARCOM as a well-respected leader in delivering productivity-enhancing software solutions to provide the rich specification content needed by architects, engineers, designers and specification professionals. This combination of untapped market opportunity and the company’s established leadership was very attractive to us.”
Christopher Bushnell, AIA, who had served as ARCOM’s President and CEO for 10 years, will retire at the end of the year. Jim Contardi, a CEO-in-residence at Alpine, has assumed the role as CEO at ARCOM.
“I am thrilled to join the industry leaders at ARCOM to lead us into the next chapter,” said Contardi. “This talented team has built a strong foundation for growth and together, with Alpine’s support, we will scale ARCOM to provide the next level of innovative solutions to the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) market. This is just the first step into an exciting future.”
“ARCOM has a long history of providing leadership in the architecture and building design industry through delivery of MasterSpec, a product created by AIA for its members,” said AIA Executive Vice President / CEO, Robert Ivy, FAIA. “We are very confident in the new ownership of ARCOM and its new CEO, Jim Contardi, and our mutual investment in the future of MasterSpec.”
Learn more about this acquisition and what it means for customers at www.arcomnet.com.
About Alpine Investors
Alpine is a values-driven private equity firm with a mission to build enduring companies by working with, learning from and developing exceptional people. Alpine specializes in lower middle-market companies in the software, online and business services industries. For more information, visit www.alpine-investors.com.
Talk with us @alpineinvestsf, LinkedIn, Facebook.
About ARCOM
ARCOM, the specification experts, exclusively publishes  MasterSpec for  The American Institute of Architects (AIA) for use by design professionals involved in building projects. ARCOM owns and publishes  SpecText^® for use by engineers for infrastructure projects, including water and wastewater utilities and equipment. ARCOM also provides extensive product and manufacturer information through cloud-based specification resources, custom manufacturer specifications, and the SpecBuilder Expert platform. ARCOM’s innovative specification productivity software tools dramatically simplify specification creation, research, editing, and formatting.