Cooperative Purchasing contracts provide efficiencies in construction documentation

Cooperatively procured contracts can solve construction documentation issues, such as the contract Delta-T Digital Archiving has through Choice Facility Partners, a facilities procurement cooperative. Finding a needle in a haystack is nearly impossible, yet facility and maintenance staff are frequently facing a similar task when they have to dig through thousands of documents in a plan room in search of a drawing that will give them the information they need. Using a cooperative purchasing solution gives facility managers an advantage. For example, Delta-T Digital Archiving, a Choice Facility Partners contract holder, is organizing and archiving all the drawings at the University of Texas at San Antonio so the staff and construction contractors can operate more efficiently without having to do the “impossible.”
 

-- To learn how to access purchasing cooperatives, go to www.choicefacilitypartners.org--

UTSA accessed Delta-T Digital Archiving’s services through a cooperative purchasing contract awarded by Harris County Department of Education and available through Choice Facility Partners, a facilities procurement cooperative.  Their project may involve as many as 25,000 drawings: some will be duplicates of originals, and some will be a duplicate with unique notes. 

According to Keith Macejewski, Delta-T Digital Archiving operations manager, it is difficult for facility managers to keep the files in order, given that staff, contractors and architects all periodically need to use the documents. “Owners typically have thousands of drawings in their plan rooms containing very valuable information,” said Macejewski.

To find out how to access the purchasing cooperative for facilities, go to http://www.choicefacilitypartners.org/

John Flores, UTSA  senior facilities planning analyst, said UTSA used the Choice Facility Partners cooperative purchasing contract with Delta-T Digital Archiving for the project, as they have experience working on a similar university project and are considered a “best in class” provider. In addition to the digital archiving services available through the cooperative purchasing contract, Delta T provides independent testing and balancing, as well as commissioning services for HVAC, with certified commissioning agents, professional engineers, and LEED accredited professionals on staff.

 “They collect and organize the drawings in a way that makes sense to the people that have to use it,” said Flores. “That’s the big value and why we wanted to work with them.”

The Delta-T Digital Archiving cooperative purchasing contract with Choice Facility Partners, a facilities purchasing cooperative, is one way to access their services and ensure all unique drawings are archived. If there are 25,000 drawings, they go through all 25,000. Then they ultimately archive only the unique ones, creating an electronic pdf file containing every drawing and arranging the file by building and project. They bookmark it and make it searchable by keyword to make the process more efficient.

Flores said the archiving project, which was accessed through a cooperative purchasing contract, will improve efficiency and make their archives more available to operations and maintenance staff so they won’t spend as much time looking for things. 

Flores said UTSA participates with several cooperative purchasing organizations, as “it just helps us. ...We want to adhere to the competitive process… and [purchasing] co-ops, like Choice, give us efficiencies, as their [cooperative purchasing] contracts have already gone through competitive selection process.  It makes it more efficient – we can get the job done quicker when we have a cooperative [purchasing organization] we can partner with.”

For more information about cooperative purchasing or procurement cooperatives, go to www.choicefacilitypartners.org  or www.hcde-texas.org.  For more information about Delta-T Digital Archiving, go to www.deltatltd.com.