by Stan Hurwitz of Creative Communications
Waterbury, CT — Brian Burke is on the phone telling a prospective new client, “Yes, any size plan, any quantity, next day – one dollar each. It’s a simple model: Email, print, ship for a fixed cost. No surprises.”
At first you might think Burke, President of Buckaplan, based in Waterbury, CT, is either joking or has transported you back to 1965. And he can’t be making any money, right?
Then you realize he’s serious. Several years ago, technology changed the way businesses wanted copies of their architectural and construction plans and drawings. When the business model changed, Burke rushed headlong into the 21st century.
While revamping his reprographics company, Burke revolutionized the electronic imaging business. He has been featured in ENR Magazine and the N. E. Real Estate Journal.
The construction industry has been heating up and orders arrive daily from across the country from clients of all sizes and types with tight deadlines and even tighter budgets.
One repeat client is Steven Hayes, President / Owner of Steven C. Hayes, Architect PC, based in Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod, whose growing business has been serving clients throughout New England for 37 years.
Hayes provides architectural services to residential and commercial clients such as real estate development firms, financial institutions and construction companies. He says, “Before we discovered Buckaplan, we used local reproduction companies which are two to three times the cost. We call on Buckaplan mainly for large format architectural drawings. Buck-a-plan has excellent service, very quick turnaround, and has saved us a lot of time and money. They are very reliable, easy to use, and we always get good quality prints and quick results.”
Another repeat client is Warwick, R.I.-based Iron Construction Group, LLC, a general contractor, project manager, and design-build construction company.
Iron Construction’s Bid Coordinator Melissa Drolet has ordered plans from others but once she discovered Buckaplan, there’s no going back. “Besides being half the price, it’s a straightforward charge per page plus shipping so I immediately know what these costs will be.”
Iron Construction recently completed a new $9 million Wellness & Fitness Center at the University of Rhode Island and ordered hundreds of pages of plans from Buckaplan. A newly-won project is a $6.8 million addition to the Middletown Fire Station. Drolet says, “We simply downloaded our specs and plans to Buckaplan’s FTP site with our own security code. We ordered five sets of the 81-page set of plans, and two bound sets of spec books for the estimator and project manager, each of which was about 600 pages.
If Buckaplan receive electronic files by 5:00 p.m EST., the client will have those plans in the next day’s UPS delivery anywhere in the U.S.
Burke says, “We can produce standard-size, high quality architectural and engineering documents working from industry standard .tif, .pdf and .dwf files. It’s just $1 per plan or drawing plus next-day ground delivery rates. He says, “It’s simple. Send us your files, we print and ship. Visit our online ordering website. There are no hidden charges, no sign-on fees, no monthly charges, no file-processing fees. No surprises.”
Stan Hurwitz is a marketing consultant at Creative Communications
