General contractors, subcontractors and others have been printing construction blueprints for decades. Although there still are some circumstances where a printed plan is necessary, the construction industry is without-a-doubt moving towards a completely digital experience. In fact, many companies are already there!
The good news is that it’s not too late to make the switch to using digital blueprints and reap the benefits! Contractors are making the switch each and every day… we know because hundreds sign up for STACK every day.
Disadvantages of Printing Blueprints
Printing blueprints has a few main disadvantages compared to using digital blueprints including:
• High Cost – Wow, blueprints are expensive to print! Each project usually has many pages to print and when you multiple that cost times the number of projects your bidding or working on, the cost can be quite substantial. It’s not unusual to have at least $1000/month just in printing costs.
• Slow – In today’s fast-paced world, who wants to wait on a printer to print your plans? You’ll also have to spend time driving to pick them up from a local printer or wait for them to be delivered if you’re using an online printer.
• Not Portable – Lugging around huge blueprint pages to the jobsite can be a pain in the butt. Plus, we all know how dirty jobsites can be. This poses the potential for blueprints to get lost, damaged or dirty.
• Not Collaborative – Only 1 person can work off a set of blueprints at a time. The plans can’t be in the office and at the jobsite at the same time. And what happens when changes are made?
• Not Updated – How many times have you printed a set of blueprints just to have changes made that require you to print them again, often times before you even receive the original set that you printed? This requires additional cost to have the plans printed again. Ugh!
