Can the construction industry leave paper blueprints behind to go paperless in 2010?
Posted by Our Green Atlanta on December 15, 2009
We’re all well-aware of the value of recycling office paper, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, etc. but what about another large source of paper that could potentially be eliminated all together? Every year 42,000 trees are killed to print blueprints for the construction industry. The solution? Replace paper blueprints with electronic plans.
That’s precisely the goal of Houston Neal, author of The End of Blueprints on The Construction Blog, a part of the website www.SoftwareAdvice.com. Neal would like to see the construction industry go paperless in 2010. This is no small feat, but not due to the lack of design and estimating software, but more due to the traditional mentality of the construction field.
Neal and his team got together and set out to research just what impact the 167-year old practice of blueprinting has on the environment and found that approximately 37 million blueprints are freshly printed each year, not to mention the carbon footprint left behind by the repographics shops and the courier vans used to pick up or hand deliver the tangible documents. What their studies offer are viable alternatives to deforestation via cost analysis and possible industry guidelines. You can read more about The End of Blueprints on his blog here!
Dee Giarratano said
As the only Georgia based vendor of desktop takeoff software, we think this change will come and will be positive for us all.
Affordability and ease of use are the keys…two attributes that we believe our software excels at.
family book said
Can you provide more information on this? take care
Our Green Atlanta said
I would check the website http://www.SoftwareAdvice.com and http://www.TakeOffLive.com for more information. I hope that helps!
- Jenny
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