Wide Format Imaging

Careful planning and efficient organization are prerequisites to successfully complete any project on time. In the construction and property development market, respecting project schedules can affect the financial viability of the whole investment. Delays may result in increased interest payments, a rise in construction costs and even the loss of investment resources when public funds contribute to project financing.

Getting from the drawing board to the completed project poses numerous challenges, and involves meeting inflexible milestones. SGA Arquitectos Associados is a busy architects' studio based in Montijo, Portugal. Joana Gouveia, one of the seven architects working at the studio, describes a recent project for which the client intended to take advantage of public funding.

"A local, not-for-profit housing and development institution commissioned our studio to develop a kindergarten project. The overall project consisted of 700 sqm (2,297 sqft)—a two-floor building and the surrounding land. We had one month to complete the project because we had to meet the government deadline so the client could obtain 70 percent funding. If there's government funding with a deadline, you cannot miss it. There's a lot of money involved - hundreds of thousands of Euros," said Gouveia. "The job involved printing eight sets of 18 plans—one A1/D plan, 13 A2/C plans and four A3+/ B+ plans for a total of 162 sqm (533 sqft). Two sets of plans went to the planning office, one each for the education authority, the fire department, the health and safety authority and the client, plus two for ourselves. On top of that we had to produce at least another three sets for contractors to get quotes. Everything we print goes to the HP Designjet T1120 SD-MFP. It's really fast and it has replaced our old printer. It saved me four hours' work just on that project. We've had it for about five months and it has taken the stress out of meeting deadlines and reduced overtime. We have just been commissioned to do two other large projects by the same client."

SGA Arquitectos Associados appreciated the high impact the HP Designjet T1120 SD-MFP had on the quality and definition of its plans, simplifying its workflow and contributing to the smooth completion of multiple projects. "We are printing a lot more. We are printing about four hundred A0/E drawings per month. Yesterday alone I printed 78 A1/D-size plans. With our old printer I had to announce the printing schedule to the rest of the team, organize it and stop all other jobs. The other staff would have to wait, or print one specific drawing if it were very urgent. Now we assign priorities to each project and using the job centre in the Embedded Web Server each member of staff can quickly manage the job queue to print an urgent job if needed. When we reverted back to our old printer recently to use up the ink, work just accumulated, even in a single day," said Gouveia. "Before I would cut and fold a plan and then another drawing would come out. With the HP Designjet T1120 SD-MFP while I cut and fold there are four more drawings ready for finishing. If a colleague helps then the project can be shipped much earlier."

Gouveia described the risks of providing incomplete or unclear drawings. "The local authorities would stop the approval process and send us a formal notification by registered post, we would then correct or simply reprint the drawing and formally notify them of the change and deliver the reprinted drawing. This can delay projects by one or even two months, just because a minor detail is unclear or missing. With our old printer we would sometimes have to calibrate the printheads and reprint drawings. It would run out of memory and pages would be blank, and when you noticed you would have to identify the file, open it in the application and send it to the printer again. These issues never happen with the HP Designjet T1120 SD-MFP, and if you do want to reprint a drawing for any reason you can use the job centre tool to preview the printer-ready file and instantly reprint it."