Washington State, Ecology, and MPS

Doc's always loved the great state of Washington and wasn't surprised to discover they have a Department of Ecology that, among other things, just awarded a major MPS contract to make the Department more green. (It's already pretty green in Washington, thinks Doc, but more is always better.)

In an open competitive bidding process, the Washington departments of General Administration and Ecology have awarded a new public-private Managed Print Services contract 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.

• 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 as well as other large format documents to fulfill public records requests.

Under the new three-year contract, 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 7.6 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 anticipates reducing desktop printing and copying and associated costs to under $40,000 per month, which is down from $60,000 in 2001. Not bad savings.