Celebrating its fifth anniversary and a growing client base, the North Bay Construction Documents Depository is doing the unexpected by moving not into a larger space, but a smaller one.
However, owner Julius Palcik says the move from its former 1,000-square-foot space to a 700-square-foot area above the current North Bay Royal Bank is about finding a building configuration that meets his office’s needs.
“It’s like buying a fridge that you really want, but it doesn’t fit through the door, so you go and buy a new house,” he says with a chuckle.
Some of the company’s scanning equipment had worn out, and rather than spend larger and larger sums of money on costly maintenance, Palcik says the company needed to invest in new equipment. However, newer generations of industrial scanners are too large for the building’s stairwell, prompting Palcik to seek out a new office instead.
Now armed with a high-speed printer and three industrial-strength scanners worth up to $120,000 and capable of handling documents 36-inches wide and 49-feet long, the NBCDD also has a specialized machine which prints on Duracopy. This type of waterproof and virtually indestructible Mylar substance has proven popular with companies working for forestry and mining firms, Palcik says.
As a storehouse of thousands of current and archived architectural drawings, blueprints, electrical diagrams, and a variety of other construction documents, the company acts as a source for many of the central documents necessary to apply for bids.
“Sometimes, it can take a business a week or more to gather up the documents they need to make a bid for a job,” he says.
“However, sometimes you only have a week to place the bid, which makes things difficult or impossible for some companies.
This is where we come in, especially if you’re an architect or tradesman, because you have better things to think about than worrying about getting it all together.”
The company not only provides the documents necessary to prepare for a job tender, but notifications about the availability of tenders as well.
The business, which Palcik refuses to call an association, also provides regular updates to its 90 members about the availability of construction and trade work up for tender. Members are also supplied with regular updates, such as project addendum.
Despite the business’ title, NBCDD’s members are located throughout the North, from Thunder Bay to Terrace Bay to Bracebridge, though some are also based in Ottawa and Winnipeg.
The spike in construction projects throughout the North in the last three years hasn’t been reflected in the NBCDD’s business levels, which have a tendency of rising in January through to May, and dropping through July and August.
Regardless, Palcik says business is now thriving, compared with the company’s humble beginnings in his basement, where he worked as a drafting technician. After various tradesmen began to make multiple requests for the same handful of drawings over the course of a few days, he realized the need for a document storehouse. He then created the NBCDD, and has since put aside his drafting work.
“You cannot sit on two horses at the same time.”
The 62-year-old, who studied at Canadore College to become a drafting technician at 43, says the business needs only two employees, though occasionally a third comes onboard to lend a hand as necessary.
“Even a horse dies from too much work,” he says.
Although he’s running a small business at an age where most people in his profession are collecting their pension, Palcik says he’d rather be working than spending his days relaxing.
“You can spend every day fishing, sure, but you can’t do it all day. Besides, so long as you don’t look at yourself in the mirror all day long, you don’t realize how old you really are, so really, you’re only as old as you feel.”
