Tanner Construction Leaves the Heavy Lifting To Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 Scanner

The largest highway and heavy-construction company in Mississippi moves tons of earth with powerful, heavy-duty equipment like bulldozers, dump trucks, and excavators.  Tanner Construction Company, Inc. also moves, scans and backs up enormous quantities of information using Epson WorkForce^TM Pro GT-S50 scanners, which fit easily on the desks of workers in its Laurel, Miss. headquarters.

 

A day’s work at Tanner Construction covers a broad spectrum including asphalt paving, bridge construction and structural concrete, drainage structures, utility and excavation work, site development, as well as the sale of construction materials. With about $95 million in new contracts this year, Tanner has 260 employees in the field at construction sites throughout Mississippi.  Meanwhile, the corporate office with 15 employees is the main hub for design revisions, project feedback, budgeting, permitting, construction issues, change orders, and billing.

 

 

To help manage the workload, 10 Epson GT-S50 scanners are now standard tools in Tanner Construction’s engineering, human resources, and accounting departments.  Near at hand, they sit on the desks of busy project managers, estimators, administrators, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and office assistants.  “Since we started using the budget-friendly Epson GT-S50 two years ago, we’ve cut our overall paper usage down by about one-third,” said Randall West, an accountant at Tanner Construction.     

 

Jobs in progress include new bridges, dams, and highway improvements for clients like the Mississippi Department of Transportation.  “With that kind of volume, payables can run about $4 million a month, which means tracking a lot of invoices from different vendors,” said West.  “The accounting department now saves the time it used to spend retrieving and filing paper and as a result is running much more efficiently.”  To keep up with the pace, each Epson GT-S50 can scan up to 25 pages and 50 images per minute, plus a high-volume duty cycle of up to 1,200 sheets per day. *        

          

 

Before Tanner Construction’s new era in high-speed scanner convenience, everyone shared a single scanner in a centralized area, but the machine couldn’t keep up with the high volume.  “To save time and money, we thought it made better sense to put the Epson scanner on the desks at each office,” said West.  Each can now easily scan stacks of documents in the 75-page Auto Document Feeder, using a front control panel with up to 10 user-definable scan jobs, including scan-to-PDF and email.  

 

From the moment a new project is awarded, a project manager at headquarters is able to scan in the contract documents, supplemental agreements, and monthly pay estimates once the project begins.  Subcontractor documents are also scanned, and all accounts payable invoices are scanned, tracking purchases ranging from nails, plyboard and two-by-fours to fuel, concrete, and structural steel.  

 

With two-sided duplex scanning and automatic paper size detection, the Epson GT-S50 also allows them to scan anything else that relates to the job, including documents up to 8.5x36 inches, business cards and rigid ID cards.   They transform all monthly and final client estimates into digital files, and then close out the job with the final acceptance and maintenance release scans.  

                 

 

All scanned documents are there for easy access, sending, editing, and filing, so all phases of the project run efficiently, with speedy communications between all on the project team.  “Before, if someone asked for a material purchase certificate, we’d have to go upstairs to search for the piece of paper in the file, and then wait in line by the fax machine,” said West.  “Nowadays, all I have to do is pull the project up in my computer, click the image, and email the certificate.”

 

“Since the Epson GT-S50 scanner came to our office, we’ve noticed that time-consuming paper jams are now a thing of the past,” said West.  The scanner’s mercury-free ReadyScan ^TM LED technology also does away with warm-up time and automatically turns off in standby mode.  Staff finds it easy to manage documents with the software, including TWAIN and EMC ISIS drivers, plus PDF, OCR, document management and business card management software. 

 

 

Founded in 1977 by president and owner Gary C. Tanner, Tanner Construction has grown from one bulldozer and dump truck to a fully diversified and vertically integrated contractor.  “We can point to hundreds of projects that we are proud to have built, including the Liberty Bridge in Natchez, Collins Bypass, Highway 84 in Waynesboro, the Big Bay Lake Dam, and the Stateline Bridge,” said West.   “Now with the help of the Epson GT-S50 scanner, our day-to-day operations run more smoothly, helping us fast-track any type of construction project.

 

#   #   #

 

*200 dpi, A4 size, black-and-white/color, Speed Priority Scanning mode, simplex (ppm)/duplex (ipm)