Greener Pastures for Blue Valley

As the Director of Business Operations for Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, Kansas, Jason Gillam says he’s always looking for ways to better support his staff.

“I have been advocating for some new facilities to support the work that we do for the better part of 15 years,” he says. “And we kind of had this vision of how we could work a little bit differently to be able to continue to keep up with growth and be able to expand some of our services — but to do so in a way that we don’t have to add more people.”

It was out of this vision that the new Logistics Center was born — a 55,000-sq.-ft. facility that has consolidated the district’s printing team under one roof. Previously, the nine-employee in-plant worked out of three different spaces in two buildings. The Logistics Center also brings the district’s warehousing team and IT project fulfillment together. Having these operations under one roof will allow them to work with one another more smoothly than before, Gillam says.

Inside the new 55,000-sq.-ft. Logistics Center at Blue Valley School District.

Geographically, the new facility could not be in a better location.

“We’re a public school district with 22,000 students, and the district spans around 91 square miles, and our facility is right smack in the middle of our district — and we now have highway access. It’s safe to say we’re perfectly located,” Gillam says.

While moving is usually associated with headaches, Gillam says the print shop move — completed in just two weeks — was close to seamless. It began on Jan. 30, was completed by Feb. 10, and the in-plant was printing its first job in the new space amid the move on Jan. 31.
Gillam has meticulous planning to thank for how smooth the move went.

“I’m fortunate enough that I work closely with a manager who manages both our print shop and warehousing team [Bruce La Londe], and he created a 186-point plan of how we were going to move the print shop in 10 working days and continue to operate during that time,” Gillam says.

The move to the new facility was nearly seamless as the new operation was up and running in just weeks' time.

Gillam notes that part of the 186-point plan was providing spreadsheets of layouts for the new space to electricians, plumbers, and other workers to give them an idea of where each piece of equipment would be located. Gillam says he and his team put painter’s tape on the floor where equipment was to be placed and where electrical connections needed to be made.

In order to continue operating during the move, customers were asked to place their orders early.

“We looked at it and said, ‘OK, well we’ve got an iGen digital press and we have a Versant that both print color, so we don’t want both of those machines down the same time, so let’s take one down and get it moved,’” Gillam says. “That way through the move we had the capability of printing color, and we took the same approach on our black-and-white digital equipment.”

The new facility has an improved layout which has brought on greater efficiency.

Overall, Gillam says the hardest part of the move was watching such expensive equipment get transported.

“We had to work with different companies to get the equipment moved, and I’ll tell you what, it was nerve-wracking seeing some of that equipment get placed up onto a forklift or put onto a flatbed truck,” Gillam admits.

Xerox did a great job moving its own equipment, he adds.

Because the in-plant’s wide-format printers had been located in two different buildings, with the operator having to go back and forth between them, the co-location of that equipment in the new facility has brought great efficiency, Gillam notes.

The Blue Valley team approves of the new location and setup as well, describing a more enjoyable workplace.

Employees are enjoying the new space, he says, especially the sunlight that comes through the windows, a big change from the previous location.

“Here, we’re able to provide a break room space, whereas before they didn’t really have a dedicated break room. We had a table in our reception area that they would sit at or they would go out and use the school cafeteria when it wasn’t used by students. So now we’re kind of on our own island,” Gillam says. “They’ve got a lot of space and it’s natural daylight, so it creates a different feeling versus before, and it’s a nice change.”