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Ecology’s Managed Print Services Contract

In an open competitive bidding process, General Administration and Ecology awarded a new public-private Managed Print Services contract in June 2011 that will further reduce Ecology’s printing and copying costs. Ricoh Americas Corp. was selected as the best bid from four companies submitting bids.

The bids were evaluated based on:

• Delivered service, including monitoring and tracking of services rendered.
• Price per copy for black-and-white, color and large-format plotters.
• Value added, including each bidder’s expertise and track record.
• Large-format capability — capacity to provide services needed for large-format plotters required for producing maps and other large format documents, some of which fulfill public records requests.

Ecology won’t own and maintain office printers and copiers. Ricoh must provide the equipment as well as timely service, maintenance and repair. Ecology will pay only for pages printed or copied. Depending on monthly printing and copying volume, black-and-white copies will cost from 3.8 cents per page (assuming 600,000 pages in a month) to 7.2 cents (assuming 300,000 to 399,999 pages in a month). For color copies, Ecology will pay 6.5 cents per page.

Based on print-copy volumes during the past year, Ecology has already reduced desktop printing and copying and associated costs to under $35,000 per month. This continues a long-term trend of Ecology reducing printing and copying costs through private-sector contracting for managed print services. The agency has reduced print / copy costs from $60,000 per month in 2001, to an average of $55,800 per month in 2009, to an average of $46,900 per month from October 2010 through February 2011.

The current service contract was first awarded by the Department of Printing in 2005 to Ricoh Business Systems Inc., and was re-negotiated in August 2010.

A recent state Print Services Performance Audit encourages more managed print contracting by state agencies.

Find out more Ecology business efficiencies and improvements.

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Questions and Answers about KOMO-TV and Ecology’s print-management contract

Focus on Ecology print / copy savings