Graphic Reproduction

Graphic Reproduction Provides or the Big Picture

By Russ J. Stacey

Graphic Reproduction's roots go back to 1959 when founder and owner Walt Walker started the company. Now a fixture throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Walker and his team still pride themselves on a cornerstone of their success: delivering what customers need, when they need it. "Recently we had a customer come in on a late Saturday afternoon," he says. "An architect brought in a job en route to his 52nd wedding anniversary. We delivered his job at 8:00 the next morning. We do live up to our word that we're there whenever you need us."

In the middle of the night, on weekends, during holidays - meeting customer deadlines is serious business. "We're committed to having each printing phase of a construction project done on time," adds sales manager Bret Foster. "That's always been our focus, and the equipment and technology that we've invested in supports that commitment."

The company, with three locations, offers a robust variety of reprographic services for the engineering, design, architectural and construction professions - from CAD plotting, document scanning and binding and finishing services to 3-D printer model making. Foster also emphasizes their comprehensive online plan room and document management service. "We can keep construction drawings and documents in an organized system. It's in a digital format, easy to access, easy to customize and password secured. For more elaborate benefits, the online plan room offers what Foster calls a "cradle to grave building concept." Uploaded files can be taken from the conception of a building project to completion. For instance, drawings and specs can be converted to an OCR format to create smart documents, which can be quickly imported and indexed into the system. All project documents can be stored in the system, including project schedules, bid instructions, punch lists, warranties, contracts, RFIs, MSDS, construction site photos and manuals. Contractors can easily perform their takeoffs electronically. Plus all documents are tracked using a Version Control System, which always knows which document is current. A large construction project currently underway in the plan room is the 1,000+ Clark Construction drawings for the John Muir Hospital expansion in Walnut Creek.

Newly acquired copier technologies like the Konica Minolta 1050 allow Graphic Reproduction to run 12x18 paper stock, which few copiers can do. The advantage it has over standard 11x17 sheet-fed copiers is that the extra inch allows for documents that are typically bound on the left side to be viewed much easier.

For speed, the KIP 9000 series wide-format plotter produces 1,200 prints an hour to produce construction bid sets. With its image-enhancement technology, plotting drawings at 600 dpi renders superior quality line and screened information, smoothing out curved lines to eradicate annoying, choppy, half-dots.

And Graphic Reproduction does its part to be green. "We are able to run copies of half-size drawings two-sided, translating to a 50% paper reduction in putting out construction bid documents," Walker says. The company offers wide-format recycled paper, and their eight large-format plotters, the KIP 7000 and 8000 series, are Energy Star-rated as well as being the only 100% toner-efficient machines in their class, meaning there is no toner waste.

Always looking to the future, Graphic Reproduction was the first reprographic service in Northern California to introduce - and is still the only one to possess - a 3-D model-making printer. An invaluable tool for developers, planners, architects and builders, it produces three-dimensional models of a building project, whether in the conceptual phase or during construction.

For customers who can't or choose not to make a large investment in copy or plotting equipment, Graphic Reproduction offers on-site facilities management services. They can install wide-format copiers, and either train the customer on how to operate the equipment or have one of their technicians do it. "The advantage is the customer doesn't have a huge capital outlay on a piece of equipment that'll be outdated in a year or two," says Oakland branch manager Dave Bethea.

Graphic Reproduction has 34 vehicles to deliver their many services. "The largest dispatch fleet for pickup and delivery," Foster says. "We service the entire Bay Area, plus Sacramento, Stockton, Santa Rosa and San Jose. We use an automated GPS system for monitoring pickups and deliveries that also improves response-time efficiency. We have a sophisticated job order tracking system for scheduling and tracking orders while in production."

"Plus we have a lot more equipment, so the job order turnaround time on larger projects is much quicker compared to other shops," Bethea says. "And we have the expertise."

Graphic Reproduction has three locations: 1381 Franquette Ave., Bldg B1, in Concord; 496 Natoma St. in San Francisco; and 2327 Union St. in Oakland. Call their Concord location at (925) 674-0900 or visit graphic4u.com for more information.

June 2008 Commercial Edition Issue

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