"There are places you go, you know at 4:30 you put your plan down and have to leave," said Georgie Ann O'Dell, who manages Contractors Exchange. "Here, they can come in at 2 o'clock in the morning if they want. They can't believe they can come in here and do work."

They'll leave the light on

By Steve Schultz
Daily Reporter Staff

		Address: 1513 S. 113th St., West Allis, WI 53214 Phone: 414-453-1509 Fax: 414-453-1445 Hours: Always open Web Site Region covered: No boundaries, but generally Wisconsin and surrounding states (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and upper Michigan) Plans available: 300 to 400 Services: nternet and e-mail access, copying, faxes, telephones, notary public and daily e-mail or fax update of new plans available Membership: $380 each year and $40 one-time registration fee

After another strong year in Wisconsin's construction industry, everyone is searching for a competitive advantage on the next big job. While one contractor is managing a building going up right now, competitors are scouring the plan rooms for the next make-or-break project. How can companies - especially small ones with few staff - finish their current jobs while still finding time to crunch the numbers?

Try burning the midnight the oil at a plan room in West Allis. Literally.

"There are places you go, you know at 4:30 you put your plan down and have to leave," said Georgie Ann O'Dell, who manages Contractors Exchange. "Here, they can come in at 2 o'clock in the morning if they want. They can't believe they can come in here and do work."

Since 1993, more than 300 members of Contractors Exchange have been able to access hundreds of plans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. According to Tony Karpfinger, who owns the plan room, it's the only room in the Midwest that's always open.

The advantage of always leaving the lights on is something that Karpfinger understands all too well after several years in construction. A professional engineer with expertise in earthwork consulting, Karpfinger worked for several years in California and also was involved in construction of the Point Beach nuclear power plant near Two Rivers. He also bought part of Edgerton Contractors.

"There was a plan room called Midwest Builders Exchange and I heard - on a fluke - that the gentleman was going to close," Karpfinger said, adding that his offer to help the plan room was rejected. "So I did some soul searching - and some finance searching - and decided to open the plan room."

In July 1998, Contractors Exchange expanded by moving to a newly renovated building. After paying their registration fees, members are issued key cards that open a magnetically locked door. Inside, a two-story room filled with tables is ringed with wall openings for as many as 400 sets of blueprints. Despite the number of plans and people coming and going at any hour, the only problem has been one person who cut apart a set of plans.

Contractors Exchange members come from across Wisconsin and beyond, including some from upper Michigan who will make a day-long trip to spend hours looking at work that may have been missed by plan rooms closer to home. Because Contractors Exchange doesn't limit itself to a specific area, many construction suppliers can gauge demand across a broad area by simply looking at the collection of blueprints on a given day, O'Dell said.

In the future, Contractors Exchange plans to look at offering Internet services, but enough paper will continue to be printed to make plan rooms a requirement of the industry. That's because contractors still prefer hard copies rather than computer drawings, Karpfinger and O'Dell said.

"Some plans are coming in on disk and we had to set up a computer in the plan room that accepts those," Karpfinger said. "(But) it costs a small fortune to set up to print plans off of a disk. It doesn't make any sense for individuals to spend that fortune just so an architect can save a little money on plans."