Paper cuts
We had an interesting comment from Emmanuel Netter, a senior figure at French collaboration provider Prosys, regarding Leigh's post 'Counting the cost'. Emmanuel highlighted two factors that would make banishing paper on construction projects a tough challenge: 1) A drawing is generally a large document and so is difficult to review on a screen; and 2) People need to use documents in the field.
I absolutely agree that we will never completely banish paper from this industry (although our post 'The Paperless Project' discusses one project's attempt at this), but we can reduce it where possible.
Paper is often necessary during review. While we have many projects now doing review and mark-up online, many still use paper to do mark-ups (while still tracking the documents electronically after each review step). It also does make sense to do reviews using A3 versions of the document - although one needs to consider the scale and detail of the particular drawing being reviewed. This not only saves paper, but makes scanning the document back into electronic storage much easier.
And, yes, the most current document does need to be physically present on site in most circumstances. But there is no need to print or re-print for archiving or wider distribution. That can be done electronically and is where a lot of the savings lie. One of our projects claimed that, compared to a similar project using traditional methods, they saved 80% of their printing costs. Considering that printing costs on a project can easily be in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, this can be a significant saving over the duration of a project.
Labels: Good practice
