"Things are changing rapidly out there due to the onset of all the electronics," said Plan-Room Manager Linda Kohlmeyer. "That is having a major effect from the big dogs all the way down to the little, itty bitty guys."

Thinking Virtual

By Steve Schultz
Daily Reporter Staff

		Address: 2600 N. Mayfair Road, Suite 200, P.O. Box 26569, Milwaukee, WI 53226 Phone: 414-778-4100 Fax: 414-778-4119 E-mail Web Site Hours: Monday-Friday, 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Plans available: Wisconsin with a few jobs from surrounding states (northern Illinois, upper Michigan and eastern Minnesota); average of 4,000 to 4,500 sets of drawings annually Services: CD-ROM-equipped computers, blueprint copying, telephone, fax, free bid deposit and estimator cards, daily bulletins, monthly newsletter and technical library and specifications Membership: Varies depending on whether companies are members of the Associated General Contractors of Greater Milwaukee; fees are pro-rated

One of the oldest construction traditions - examining blueprints for the next big job - might soon take a giant leap into the electronic age as one builders exchange dreams of taking all its plans online.

"Things are changing rapidly out there due to the onset of all the electronics," said plan-room manager Linda Kohlmeyer. "That is having a major effect from the big dogs all the way down to the little, itty bitty guys."

The Milwaukee Builders Exchange, located on the second floor of an office building opposite the Associated General Contractors of Greater Milwaukee, is developing preliminary plans for an electronic plan room, AGC Executive Vice President Mike Fabishak said.

"In some areas, AGCs and builders exchanges are rivals, competitors," Kohlmeyer said. "Some AGCs have plan rooms and then there is a builders exchange nearby. And with us, the builders exchange end of us doesn't run the programs that other builders exchanges do - the safety, the educational - because AGC runs those."

Free of the supporting programs, the Milwaukee Builders Exchange has been able to develop contacts to get many of the construction plans available in Wisconsin. The room handles up to 4,500 sets of drawings each year, Kohlmeyer said, and competes with a local 24-hour plan room by emphasizing the ability for members to take plans home with them.

"So they are still getting the 24-hour service from us," Kohlmeyer. "If you're going to be sitting here working on a drawing at 2 a.m., do you want to be out in the cold somewhere else by yourself, or would you rather be sitting at your kitchen table?"

The close collaboration between the exchange and AGC - "one in the same," Kohlmeyer said - is bringing forward plans to provide the 450 members with the latest technology. Until recently, plan rooms have limited their high-tech amenities to computers with CD-ROM drives. The federal government, for example, puts some of its plans in a computerized format, Kohlmeyer said.

Now plans are underway to create a fully electronic plan.

"As people become more comfortable with technology, some will be looking forward to it and will pay a premium for it," Fabishak said. "There's no grounds-well, but it will be coming."

But don't consign blueprints to the recycling bin just yet. The bins at the Milwaukee Builders Exchange are still filled with rolls of plans.

"I don't think it's necessarily going to go paperless," Kohlmeyer said. "I think they'll try to. It depends on who you talk to in the industry, where you go. Some are like, 'Paper's out, it's gone, thing of the past.'

Then you talk to the other guys, pretty much the ones out in the field who have the back of their truck filled with those drawings and they're like, 'We couldn't do it out there without them.' This is all going to take time."