Suggestion to the IRgA about developing standards for government procurements of reprographics services

To the Officers and Directors if the IRgA:

How about developing a document that can be used by IRgA members (if not all reprographers) to educate “government purchasing” agents, who prepare ITBs and RFPs for reprographics services, how to “call out” reprographics services? A “standard procedure” (or maybe it should be referred to as a “standard practice”) is what I’m referring to.

· Standard nomenclature that should be used for describing each type of reprographics service.

· Standard unit of measure that should be used for each type of reprographics service.

· Standard method to be used to determine the lowest bid.

Well, that’s for starters; I’m sure the “brain trust” at the IRgA can come up with a complete list of what should be included in this sort of document.

Having a “standard procedure" (or standard "practice", or standard "guidelines", or whatever else you want to call this) would accomplish two important things:

(1) – it would save reprographers a lot of time and effort (and time is money.) Reprographers would not have to waste time dealing with ignorant call-outs, nor would they have to deal with pricing services that are obsolete.

(2) – it would save a lot of time and effort for our government procurement agencies (and time is money.) Can you imagine how much time our government agencies waste on the preparation of ITBs and RFPs for reprographics services? All of us are taxpayers. Do we really want to do nothing to prevent this huge time waste? Especially when our industry can do something about it?