Dan Mouchett behind the desk at IRgA member Abadan in Spokane, Washington.
By Ed Avis
Abadan Reprographics & Imaging, a new IRgA member in Spokane, Washington, has a simple website with few bells and whistles.
“We haven’t spent a lot of time on it because we’ve been around for so long that if you don’t know who we are, you probably don’t need us for anything,” says Dan Mouchett, co-owner of the company with Paul Rayburn. “It’s kind of odd to say that, but it’s the truth.”
The interior at Abadan
Abadan, which was founded in 1953, is definitely a traditional reprographics firm. They primarily serve the AEC market and plan printing is still an important service, even though it’s way down from a few years ago.
But don’t be fooled: Abadan has actually been a leader in terms of digital services.
“We started about 15 years ago, before anybody else figured out the online stuff,” Mouchett says. “We figured out that we’re the ones with all the documents because everybody comes to us to get them printed, so it made sense that we started a plan room.”
With that plan room, Abadan now serves clients throughout the Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.
“And not only do we have our own plan room, we actually do them for other entities,” Mouchett explains. “For example, we do it for AGC in Idaho, and with multiple municipalities over the years. And we set up virtual plan rooms for our good customers, mainly architects and general contractors, where they can post jobs and link it off their site.”
Printing equipment at Abadan
Mouchett says they use Online Plan Service from Barryhund to create and manage the plan rooms. They also use ReproConnect for its bid management service.
Abadan profits from the digital services in several ways. On one side of the equation, they charge for jobs to be posted to the plan room by architects, owners, or others. They scan the originals if they are hard copy, post the files, and host them. On the other side, subcontractors and others who are seeking work pay a subscription fee for the privilege of searching for jobs that are out for bid.
Mouchett explains that the system has a powerful search function that subcontractors find helpful. “They can go in and specify very tightly as to what information they want to see. Like if they’re lining parking lots, they can put that in there and only those parking lots that need to be striped will show up from the bids.”
Another digital profit center for Abadan is scanning existing drawings for builders doing renovations and additions. Mouchett says the current tough real estate market is leading builders in his area to focus on that work instead of new construction, which is leading to more scanning work for Abadan.
“They’re remodeling or making additions, so they are bringing in as-built sets to be scanned. That’s where the money is in that part, especially if the plans have been redlined, because then you have to scan them in color and that costs more money,” he says.
Even the color printing work Abadan does is primarily for AEC clients, he says. These clients sometimes need copies of plan sets that include pages in color, for example, or they ask Abadan to print color renderings or presentations.
Abadan is a lean operation these days, with just four employees and the two co-owners. Mouchett is proud of his team and the quantity of work they do.
“Fortunately, my employees have been with me for 15 to 30 years,” he says. “In fact, my lead person has been with us 31 years. These days we do more business with less people, and it’s because they’re more talented. They’ve been around, they understand the industry, and in our area everybody knows them by name.”
What does the future hold for the company? Mouchett says they work hard to keep up with technology and talk to customers about what else they need. “They say, ‘We’re fine, we just need more work.’ But we’ve supported them. We turn out a quality product for our customers. They know they’ll get the work on time, it’s done well, they just don’t have to worry about it.”