Serving His City With Pride
Service is in Greg Cooper's blood. The self-described "Navy brat" lived up and down the East Coast as a child, as his father moved from ship to ship during his career in the Navy.
He followed in his father's footsteps, entering the armed forces by joining the U.S. Air Force in 1989. Today, Cooper serves the City of Baltimore's document needs in his role as print shop manager of the municipality's Digital Document Division.
Cooper entered the Air Force under a general classification with aspirations of becoming a meteorologist. However, there were few opportunities available for his original occupational pursuit.
"But there were 15 openings in reprographics," Cooper recalls. "Here I am today, a printer."
Cooper spent four years in the service, learning the graphic arts trade. This includes six months in his birth state of Virginia at defense mapping school where he was trained to run presses and develop film. He was also stationed for two years in Greece and 18 months in Shreveport, La.
"My first duty station didn't even have planes; it was a listening post," Cooper notes. He spent his time in the Air Force printing top-secret classified materials, as well as church bulletins, flight schedules and general information for the air base.
After his time in the Air Force, he entered the commercial printing world and focused on legal printing, where he rose to the rank of supervisor. Cooper then had a short stint selling copiers before he signed on at the in-plant for the Maryland Department of Social Services in 1995.
After six years there, he joined the City of Baltimore's in-plant in 2001, and has been running it like a business ever since.
"When I first got here, people didn't even know there was a print shop," Cooper says with a laugh. "There was a large buffalo in the room and nobody even saw it."
But now they know. One of Cooper's first directives to the staff was to never turn any work down, he says. And if they could not produce a job in-house, they would find a way to get it done for their customers.
Change has been a constant under Cooper's command. He concludes the biggest transformation the in-plant has made was moving from offset presses to digital equipment.
"I believe getting rid of our large offset presses and going digital, primarily with copiers, has really helped keep the shop alive," Cooper says. By doing so, the in-plant was able to take on all of the city's bill printing work, as well as all variable data jobs coming out of the information technology group.
"That has really made us invaluable to the city," Cooper proclaims. "That is how the city gets paid. With the presses we really couldn't have done that kind of work."
The in-plant is home to a Xerox DocuColor 8002, a DocuTech 180 HLC, a DocuTech 128 HLC, a 4112 and two Nuvera 288s.
Scanning Service Proves a Hit
Cooper is always on the lookout for new services the in-plant can offer. A few years ago he added scanning and archiving of forms and architectural plans. The shop now handles in excess of 30,000 images per month.
"Any time someone gets a permit with the city they have to turn in a blueprint," he explains. "Well, now we scan those blueprints, convert them to digital files and upload them right to the server and then we destroy the paper on the backside."
The shop depends on an Océ TDS 600 wide-format scanner to scan the large number of blueprints the city receives. It also can handle wide-format printing jobs with its Epson Stylus Pro 9600 and Xerox 8265 wide-format printers.
Other services Cooper has added are Braille printing, forms management and shredding.
"If I was going to do scanning, there was no point in having an outside company to do the shredding," Cooper notes. "I bought a shredder for $7,000 and now I get to charge for that work as well."
Cooper points out that he pays particular attention to bringing in new business and running the shop with fiscal responsibility—not only to give the city superior service, but also to provide security for the in-plant's 21 employees.
Sadly, the shop had to lay off seven staff members last year due to city budget cuts. Cooper saw printing demand and his revenue drop sharply, leading to the tough decision to reduce staff.
"It was the worst day of my life," Cooper admits.
Cooper likes to think of himself as a hands-on manager, who doesn't mind getting dirty in the bindery or talking shop with the graphic artists while they are producing jobs. He often gets out of the office to visit customers and will deliver work personally.
"I am not afraid to grab a handcart and deliver jobs," –Cooper says. "It gets me into our customers' offices. If I see a stack of papers sitting there I will let them know that we can create PDFs for them, or mention that we can produce business cards for new employees. It opens up new sales opportunities."
This goes back to Cooper's determination to provide a stable workplace for his employees, whom he considers family. He is also concerned about providing for his real family, as he is a father of five: four boys and a girl.
"I am just trying to make sure that all of my employees are able to retire someday," Cooper concludes. "And me too."
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