As owner of Engineers Reprographics, Bryan Cox has seen technology advance so that a print that used to take two weeks now takes mere minutes.
Business Spotlight: Engineers Reprographics & Supply Co. Inc.
Jennifer Taylor
Posted online
Bryan Cox helps shape Springfield's construction landscape without ever lifting a hammer. Cox's efforts are on paper, on the front end of construction projects.
His company, Engineers Reprographics & Supply Co. Inc., serves area architects and contractors with large-format printings of their drawings. Acting as a printer and distributor, Engineers Reprographics can serve as a middleman bringing designers and contractors together to construct projects.
From print to project
Upon the design of construction projects or residential subdivisions, architects and design firms bring their original works to Engineers Reprographics, 1600 E. St. Louis St., which scans the designs to produce blueprints and construction documents. For clients opting to purchase the plan distribution service, construction instructions are printed and compiled to form a project's specification manual. Usually 50 sets of the manual are printed for distribution to contractors and subcontractors who are bidding on the job.
In the pre-construction stage, project blueprints are kept at Engineers Reprographics.
"The general contractors come in, put a deposit check down and access the plans," says Cox, who two years ago bought out his family's company, founded in 1967 by his father, Bud. "We take their money, hold onto the checks and keep track of which general contractor has which set of plans."
Engineers Reprographics also distributes the addendums to all contractors who have picked up plans and are bidding on a job.
Easy bidding
To streamline the bidding process, Engineers Reprographics has created an online plan room at www.erdigital.com where firms can view projects without leaving the office. The plan room includes public jobs and invitation-only bids.
Architects send an e-mail to announce when plans are available to view at the Engineers Reprographics plan room, and interested parties may view and order the drawings online. Then, the prints are shipped or available for pickup.
"In some cases, we will put plans online where they can download them and just print them off in their office," Cox adds.
Cox says general contractors also invite subcontractors to use the plan room in the bidding process. Once subcontractors view the plans and order the plans pertaining to their specialty, then they submit a bid to the general contractor. The general contractor collects all the bids and submits the bid price on the project.
About 50 clients, including Sapp Design Associates Architects, have used the online plan room service, Cox says.
A peek inside the public side of the company's plan room in early January shows two Sapp Design projects - a community center in Carl Junction and a FEMA shelter in Ozark - among the nine listed. Three projects accepting bids are a remodel of Springfield's Toys "R" Us, a Humansville school addition and a recreational trail for Ozarks Technical Community College. Each listing provides a job description, the company posting it and the job status, for instance - "accepting bids," "pending" or "bidding closed."
"(Engineers Reprographics) will create the database on who is bidding on (a) project at all times," says Karrie Smith, business manager at Sapp Design. "After (a project) bids, (Engineers Reprographics) will collect all of the drawings back and deliver them to the general contractor that was awarded the project."
Sapp Design uses the plan room for all of its project bids and hires Engineers Reprographics to create blueprints and mounts of presentation boards.
"We expect a whole lot, and (Cox and his team) provide that for us," Smith says. "(It's) no different from what our clients expect from us."
Keeping pace
Engineers Reprographics has made a point to keep up with technological advancements. When the company began, Cox says the printing process would average two weeks with a draftsman using a single sheet. In the mid-1980s, pen plotters reduced drawing time to two or three hours. Ink-jet technology in the early 1990s reduced the time to minutes. Now, with laser or plain paper print processing, machines can produce between three and 22 prints a minute.
The company sells large-scale prints for 15 cents per square foot, but Cox says pricing varies by job and client. Besides digital prints, Engineers Reprographics also sells plotters, and copier and printing supplies.
The company recorded $2 million in 2007 revenues, but Cox said as he closes the books on 2008, the numbers don't look as good.
New in 2009, Engineers Reprographics expects to start selling 3-D printing systems by mid-February. Designers can use the machines to make prototypes direct from their computers, Cox says.
"This prints (a) powder into a hardening agent and creates a 3-D model," he says, adding that the medical industry is using the machine with magnetic resonance imaging to essentially print out a model of a patient's spine.
He says there is talk to eventually use the machines to create replacement arteries with another flexible material that the machine can print.
"There are a lot of promises with this technology coming up, but for the short term, the use would be for manufacturers to create prototypes," Cox says.
