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Turning a new green leaf at Sunshine Coast Grammar School

It’s difficult to imagine a more relaxed and picturesque location for one of the country’s leading private schools. Set in nearly 90 acres and boasting its own lakes and rainforest, Sunshine Coast Grammar School is a distinctive, inspirational college for children from preschool to Year 12.

Sunshine Coast Grammar, established in 1997, is an independent, co-educational school, and provides comprehensive academic, cultural and sporting programs for 1,210 students. It also hosts an early learning centre for 150 children.

Providing all the materials required for so many students is no small task. The school runs a dedicated print room to produce most of it, from exam papers to student records, student notes, copies of reference books, as well as marketing material and administrative documents. Only sophisticated publications such as the school’s prospectus are printed externally.

Business challenge and scenario

The leases held on the school’s printers were nearing expiry, and John Fadian, General Manager of Corporate Services, and IT manager, Karen Reardon, determined that there were several factors that needed addressing in the renewal of the leases.

“Because we’ve used a migration process, some of the older machines we had were getting more difficult to maintain,” said John Fadian. “We decided at the end of the five-year lease that we were going to upgrade and modernise, and the idea was to bring in more userfriendly facilities and spread them around the campus. We have 85 acres here and we wanted to situate them at strategic spots.

“We’ve also grown quite a bit since we started the contract – we’ve added several buildings, one of which was at the other end of the campus, so the need for a different print solution arose from those challenges.”

“We were also using a keypad solution for security for documents but that was reaching the end of its life, so we decided to look at a different security solution,” said Karen Reardon.

Karen and John were also committed to finding a solution that lowered the school’s carbon footprint and reduced its consumption of paper and other consumables. They placed great importance on the school’s role as a community leader in environmental initiatives for the district.

The school went to open tender to remedy these problems, and received four proposals from leading technology companies.

Solution

Sunshine Coast Grammar decided to invest in a new complement of Fuji Xerox print devices, integrated with a cost management software solution, to handle its diverse document requirements.

Fuji Xerox Business Centre Sunshine Coast installed six Fuji Xerox ApeosPort-IV C4470 and three ApeosPort-IV C4430 printers around the school buildings. It also installed one Fuji Xerox 4127 black-and-white light production printer capable of producing 125 impressions per minute, as well as copying and scanning up to 100 impressions per minute, in the school’s print room. Accompanying this was an ApeosPort-IV C7780 full-colour printer that can print up to 70 pages per minute, and an ApeosPort-IV C6000 printer.

This blended fleet of ApeosPort devices and entry-level production printers was integrated using a print-release system, to provide true security for sensitive documents, as well as track and record every facet of the school’s print history, as well as analysing the use of print around the various school departments to find ways of cutting costs.

“We went to four different companies for the tender, but we chose the Fuji Xerox Business Centre because of our history with them,” said Karen Reardon.

“The fact that they are a local business and have a long history of success in schools, along with their reliability and service, made the decision easy.

“In the end, the Fuji Xerox solution met all our needs, and we saved some money at the same time. We were also able to put in a ‘green’ solution that improved our environmental performance.”

Benefit: Improved production quality and ease of use

Most obvious after the installation of the new equipment was the ease of production of black-and-white documents, a scenario that had previously been especially problematic.

“Since the new printers were installed in early October it’s been the busiest time of year for us, so it’s been a good test of the new system. We’ve noticed the extra volume we can put through, particularly in black-and-white,” said John Fadian.

“That was very important for us – to get a high-volume, high-speed black-and-white device that could alleviate a lot of the bottlenecks we’ve had, producing documents and material needed for curriculum work. Also, the complexity of the jobs that have been given to the print room since the change in equipment hasn’t been a problem.”

Benefit: Saving time and paper through print-release

Sunshine Coast Grammar has found savings not just in its printing costs but also in time spent by staff in their daily routines through the use of the follow-you queue function. It has also streamlined the administration staff’s duties.

“The savings for us are being able to manage the print flow, and that’s an ongoing process for us. The print-release system, in conjunction with the equipment, is going to give some of that back. By using the follow-you queue we’ve saved a lot of paper in the very early stages of this changeover, just through the students not printing unnecessary material and putting it in the bin,” said Karen.

“The person who tracks paper use is impressed by how little we’ve gone through. The follow-you queue system is working really well. Staff are really happy that they can go to any printer and get their print job, and students say the same thing. Copiers aren’t ploughing through paper all the time with nobody in attendance, because the job’s not released for printing until they get there.”

Benefit: Smooth implementation ensures easy transition

The transition to the new solution was remarkably smooth, according to both Karen and John Fadian.

“We had no trouble with the change. It was fairly painless,” said Karen Reardon.

“It needed a paradigm shift in the way people thought about printing, but it didn’t disturb anybody.

“We’re using a swipe card system for staff. We haven’t moved to that yet for students but we will eventually, because we have other electronic systems in the school that we want to integrate into the card. We hope that in the next 12 months we’ll get a card for them for copying, and to use at their retail store and the tuckshop.”

More news at the media centre.