A San Francisco-area concern that helps companies reduce software errors plans to open early next month a software-testing center in Spokane Valley, where it will employ four people initially and as many as 12 within the next year.


The 11-year-old company, Critical Logic Inc., currently employs about 35 people at its headquarters in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, as well as a sales executive in Seattle, says John MacAllister, its chief operating officer. The privately held concern serves mostly Fortune 500 companies, including Siemens, Kodak, Nike, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, providing software validation and error-checking for those companies own internal software systems.


Critical Logics Spokane Valley operation will be located in about 2,000 square feet of leased space at 1120 N. Mullan, and is expected to open in early December.


All four of Critical Logics first employees here will be hired locally, and the company already has been interviewing potential employees, MacAllister says. He says he will travel here from Burlingame regularly to train the staff at the new office, as will representatives of one of Critical Logics clients, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems Inc., for which the office here will be doing work. MacAllister says he will select one of the four new hires here to act as a team leader for the operation.


Critical Logic considered several cities for its first branch office, including Salt Lake City, Utah; Reno, Nevada; and Olympia, Wash., and chose Spokane for its low operating costs and abundant labor pool, MacAllister says.


He says that rather than hiring software professionals here, Critical Logic plans to staff the office with people with other backgrounds, including liberal arts graduates who majored in history, philosophy, math, or even music, and who are smart, detail oriented, and have an analytical sense.


He says the Spokane areas strong collection of colleges and universities is one of the reasons Critical Logic chose to locate the testing center here, and adds that the company likely will hire some recent college grads.


Starting salaries will begin in the high $20,000 range, and Critical Logic will provide full health-care benefits to employees and their family members at no charge to the employee, as well as other benefits, MacAllister says. The employees hired here will be able to work their way up in the company, he says.


With the Spokane Valley office, We could save an estimated $100,000 on operating costs in the first year alone, and have been very impressed with the availability of talent and pool of graduates in this area, says MacAllister. We also wanted to choose a location where employees could enjoy living.


The Spokane Area Economic Development Council has been assisting Critical Logic in its plans to open an office here.


Critical Logic offers a suite of services intended to eliminate bugs in software and to reduce the time it takes to develop software.


MacAllister says the company does that by focusing on the initial specifications drawn up to define a piece of softwares functionality. He says that 80 percent of all software defects are due to inadequate specifications going into the development process.


The company uses proprietary software and logically intuitive workers to analyze software plans and advise its clients of potential problems before the software specifications are finalized and code writing begins. It also offers other software-testing and scripting tools that can be used later in the software development process.


Contact Paul Read at (509) 344-1262 or via e-mail at paulr@spokanejournal.com.