Moray College in Elgin caters for approximately 1,200 full time students on site. There are roughly 7,000 enrolments each year, with many of those for part time courses or evening classes as well as full-time higher and further education courses enabled by UHI funding. Students at the Elgin campus benefit from excellent facilities, including a new technology centre, on-site nursery and brand new £1.65 million learning resource centre. The associated operational and administrative changes required for the College to become a partner location in the emerging University of the Highlands and Islands presented a perfect opportunity to review the College’s communications and reprographics needs.
According to Greg Cooper, Director of Corporate Services at Moray College, the fact that ageing analogue systems were near the end of their lease terms and operational life presented an additional opportunity to consider how the College could fully take advantage of the digital era.
However Greg was also keen to make sure that cost benefits were delivered as well, without detracting from the service to teaching staff and hence the quality of education provided to students. Moray College took the step of appointing an independent consultant whose task was to ‘audit’ their communication and reprographics needs and help them develop a brief for potential suppliers.
The consultant had recommended a migration to digital multifunctional systems throughout the College and devised some parameters and specifications which were then approved and developed by various departments under the guidance of Celia Armitage, the College’s Head of Learning Support Services, before being sent out to competitive tender.
Danwood Highland was amongst the companies that responded to the tender, proposing a solution for the print room and the distributed copying needs of several departments and locations which proved sucessful. The print room is now equipped with three units which completely replace the previously installed systems. The high volume systems also incorporate finisher/sorter units enabling complete booklets to be produced in one easy operation. Additional hole punching capability may also be added in the near future.
The print room now has increased capacity and greater flexibility, as well as a much more pleasant environment, thanks to the quieter operation of the digital equipment and the fact that they take up much less space.
Aside from the high volume document production systems in the print room, Danwood Highland also supplied several other mid/low volume systems throughout the College.
A mid-volume device is installed in what the College terms its “model office”. This is a fully functional, working office set up to give secretarial and business students hands on experience of working in a typical office environment with a variety of office technologies, including computing and IT systems, switchboards and office reprographics units. Unusually perhaps, the model office actively seeks out work for the students and canvasses for extra copying or print jobs! As a result, the model office has copy volumes almost approaching those of the print room, but again there has been no deterioration in copy quality or reliability.
The final word is left to Greg Cooper:
“The provision of the very latest digital systems and the service support and training assistance delivered by Danwood Highland has enabled us to fulfil our objectives of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the College’s total document production requirements. We’ve actually expanded the range of services available and increased volume, while benefiting from the planned and phased transition to a fully digital, networked, reprographic environment. What’s particularly pleasing however is that we’ve achieved all that and actually spent less than the budget previously allocated!”
©2008 Danwood Highland