On the surface, storing paper blueprints doesn’t seem terribly costly. You spend a few bucks on paper, spend a few more to print it out, and shove it in a box in the dusty blueprint dungeon until it needs to be retrieved. But what if we told you those thin little pieces of trees could be costing your business hundreds of thousands of dollars each year? Sounds crazy, right? Get ready. We’re about to dive into the real costs of outdated blueprint storage.
This post isn’t filled with hyperbole, conjecture, or guesswork. We’re busting out the research, flexing our science muscles, and digging deep into the wild and terrifying world of paper blueprint storage. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
A Few Bins of Blueprints, An Old Storage Room, and Thousands of Dollars in Wasted Revenue
We can condense blueprint-related costs down into three simple buckets:
- Storage
- Productivity
- Security
For now, we’re going to cover these three simple buckets. But it’s important to note most businesses also have intangible costs (e.g., tribal knowledge, etc.) that we aren’t including in this guide. But they’re still costs. They’re simply harder for us to discuss with science.
The Cost of Blueprint Storage
How much could it possibly cost to shove some paper blueprints into a small room? More than you think. For the purposes of this post, let’s assume you run a smaller facility and only need a 10′ x 30′ blueprint storage space. That’s about the size of a master bedroom. Before we even dive into the costs of setting this space up with the right equipment, we need to discuss the costs of this room even existing. Here’s a quick breakdown of how much that room is costing you:
Utilities
Storing paper blueprints requires specific heating and cooling conditions. If the room gets too cold, you risk overspending on utilities. If the room gets too hot, it can damage your blueprints. So, let’s say you keep it at a comfy 73 degrees. The average cost of heating and cooling a commercial building is roughly $2.10 per sq foot. That works out to around $650 per year. Of course, this is hyper-area-dependent. Urban areas in Toronto will likely have higher utility costs than suburban areas.
Safety
Around 40 to 60 percent of businesses that experience a disaster go out of business. So, letting a fire run loose in your blueprint storage room is obviously off the menu. You can expect to pay $2 to $7 per square foot for sprinkler systems. That’s another $2,000.
Security
While most of the security costs of this room are already covered in your facility security costs, you’ll likely need additional wiring and hardware. So, you can assume at least $300 to set up this room for physical security.
Maintenance
The average cost of maintenance is around $1.85 per square foot of business space. That’s around $550.
Rent
The average rent in Toronto is $23.62 per square foot. That’s roughly $7,000 per year for this space. Obviously, this cost differs by area, so you’ll need to self-calculate these totals based on your total rent.
It’s More than Just Storage Space
These costs are simply for space itself. Now we get to talk about costs associated with retrofitting this space to store blueprints. First, you’ll need shelving and racks. A simple shelf costs around $400. You’ll need at least 5 of these. That’s another $2,000. You’ll also need some racks, bins, and boxes. You can estimate around $1,500 for these. But wait! Who is going to organize these blueprints and ensure that they’re retrieved and returned in a timely manner? You’ll need someone on watch.
The average file manager has a salary of around $62,641. Of course, you could attempt to forgo a file manager in favor of an ad-hoc system, but you’ll add significant costs to the productivity bucket (which we’ll discuss next).
And we can’t forget about the cost of paper. There are two costs associated with blueprint paper. The paper itself (which can be expensive depending on the quality of print used and the size of the paper), as well as the cost of using paper from a customer perspective. Eighty-eight percent of consumers are more loyal to environmentally-friendly brands, and 87 percent will purchase products from brands with an environmentally-conscious workplace. We won’t actually include these costs (they’re hyper-intangible), but they’re something to keep in mind. We’ll also skip any guilt talk over the environment. But remember, paper comes from trees. And each piece of paper you store contributes to deforestation and carbonization. For now, let’s assume you spend $4,000 on printing your blueprints. Given the cost of blueprint-quality paper, printing services, and the number of blueprints the average facility stores, that’s a fair (actually, more than fair) assumption.
What You Could Do with the Space
Finally, you have the cost of lost opportunity. What could you be doing with that space instead? That space could be generating revenue, used for R&D, or leveraged for growth initiatives. Again, this cost isn’t even calculated into our total. But it’s certainly important to consider.
If we add these costs together, the space you store your blueprints in costs you around ~$78,000 per year. Yeah! That’s significant. But buckle up; because space is actually the smallest cost associated with blueprint storage. It gets worse.
The Cost of Productivity
Trying to quantify the cost of lost productivity isn’t easy. But we’re going to give it a shot. The average employee spends 2.5 hours per day searching for files and paper documents. To make things worse, they’ll only find those documents 56 percent of the time. According to IDC, paper documents like blueprints cost your company a 20 percent loss in total productivity. That’s terrifying, right? It’s hard to quantify just how insanely expensive this is for facilities. We’re not talking about thousands of dollars here; we’re talking about hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Of course, blueprints only make up a small percentage of your total paper load, but you can assume blueprints are costing you at least a hundred thousand in productivity each year.
How is this possible?
Well, just take a look at our post about the lifecycle of a paper blueprint. You’ll start to see how lost documents and tribal knowledge slowly consume productivity. Here’s a little hint: 7.5 percent of paper documents get lost and 3 percent are misfiled. Imagine the amount of time employees spend searching for non-existent blueprints. It’s maddening.
So, already paper documents like blueprints cost you 20 percent of your business’s overall productivity and incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs due to lost productivity. That’s massive. But it gets worse. Paper documents aren’t just a pain; they’re life-sapping. Eighty-five percent of employees are unhappy. And why wouldn’t they be? Ninety percent of them spend the majority of their long, arduous days with repetitive, mind-numbing, and boring-as-heck tasks. Here’s the big secret: unhappiness can destroy your profits. Happy employees make 37 percent more sales, create 21 percent higher profits, and take 10 times fewer sick days each year. In fact, disengagement costs businesses billions a year.
So, those teeny-tiny paper blueprints bleed hundreds of thousands in productivity, happiness, and lost sales. Yeah. And, to make things a little spookier, we still haven’t hit the biggest cost. Buckle up.
The Cost of Security
Facility blueprints are one of the most precious resources at your disposal. And losing blueprints to threat actors compromises your security, safety, and facility health. According to research, a breach impacting customer records costs the average business nearly $4 million to rectify. There is a good chance facility-related breaches will cost you even more. You may need to completely rewire security systems, deal with regulatory fines, reputation damage, and the ever-looming risk of employee safety hazards. Unfortunately, security is a major reason some businesses avoid digitizing. They fear the risks of cloud solutions. Here’s the problem: 21 percent of security incidents involve paper, and 61 percent of security attacks on mid-market facilities are paper-based. In other words, digital cloud storage backed by billions of dollars in R&D and security isn’t the worrying risk vector. Those easy-to-access pieces of paper in a dungy basement are far riskier.
You may be thinking “we have world-class physical security, those paper documents aren’t going anywhere.” Think again. Forty-seven percent of business leaders say their last hack was due to the accidental loss of a document by an employee — not a masked bandit. Misplacing a single blueprint can compromise your facility. It’s a major problem — especially when threat actors attack every 39 seconds on average.
In other words, security may not cost you today. But it will eventually. And a single breach can cost you millions.
Are You Ready to Digitize and Evolve Your Blueprint Ecosystem?
Tired of throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the shredder each year? It’s time to evolve. At DCM, we provide a world-class blueprint digitization and organization platform for facility managers looking to maximize the value of their facility ecosystem. Contact us to learn how we can save you money, time, and headaches with your blueprint storage challenges!