Simons Construction powers down printing costs

Simons Construction has cut its paper consumption by a third in the past year by centralising printing.

The company reduced its printers by 90% to 14 high-volume units that print documents only when confirmed by staff for a second time at the unit.

Paul Davis, divisional director at Simons, said after 12 months the initiative has also reduced the company's consumption of power.

"We now have fewer printers to run and they automatically switch to power-saving mode when idle to cut their power consumption to a bare minimum," he said.

The company has replaced all CRT monitors with more energy efficient LCD models and switched to more energy efficient blade servers in other IT-related initiatives.

This is part of a project to create a more environmentally friendly office, which started when the company decided to move eight separate offices into a new headquarters in Lincoln in 2007.

"This has had the compounded effect of reducing the power consumption for cooling because the LCD screens and blade servers generate less heat," said Davis.

Simons introduced hotdesking to reduce the number of workstations required and is using video conferencing to reduce travel to meetings.

Non IT-related initiatives include the harvesting of rainwater from the roof of the office building and the use of motion sensors to shut down lighting and cooling systems when not required.