case study

Nick of Time

Police inplant chooses Watkiss to improve turnaround times

The print department at the Northumbria Police Headquarters at Ponteland in Newcastle-upon-Tyne is obliged to keep the force's police officers well stocked with a myriad of internal forms, carbonless sets and a wide variety of reports. Rush jobs are a fact of life - operational orders for the policing of car rallies, Newcastle home matches and VIP visits cannot be produced until the last minute. As well as quick-turnaround multi-page documents, the department also prints sophisticated colour work, such as the force's Annual Review and the Police Charter, plus crime prevention posters of all types.

On top of all this, the Northumbria Police inplant must have the competitive edge of a commercial concern. The department is encouraged to take on profit-making work from outside bodies in order to supplement its budget, which is subject to the constraints faced by any user of public funds, with every expense scrutinised. Outside work comes from police related bodies such as the Probation Service, Victim Support and other police forces, with profit-making jobs from the private sector on the increase - notably from the rising number of security firms who are taking over many traditional police tasks.

As with commercial operations, track records are built up over time, and via word of mouth. "We recently took on a job for a security firm in conjunction with the Northumbria force, and it was so well received we were asked to produce a similar job for the Scottish Office and the Central Scotland Police Force, also part-financed by the private sector," says Print Manager George Waters. "We have the freedom to take on anything we have time for, and usually we are allowed to plough back profits into the department."

The Government has sought to contract-out many elements of police work, but George Waters believes that there will always be police inplants financed by public funds. "Because of the delicate nature of many of the documents we produce, police printing is an unlikely target for competitive tendering, unlike other departments formerly under public control such as catering and cleaning," he says.

With the heavy demands of printing for the police, plus the added necessity to be commercially competitive means that flexible production schedules able to cope with short-notice jobs, multi-disciplined staff, and the most adaptable and cost-effective equipment are a necessity. To that end, the Northumbria Police inplant has recently re-equipped its finishing section with a Watkiss Vario collating system, which Mr. Waters believes is the most versatile on the market.

"Collation, booklet-making and trimming used to be carried out as three separate operations, and when we first thought about updating our collator, we considered buying a machine which would marry up to our existing booklet maker, but soon realised that having an in-line stitch-fold system would be a far better solution." There then followed a three-way contest between Watkiss and two other collator suppliers, each offering equipment to a similar specification. Mr. Waters and his team devised a test job so that each machine faced an identical challenge - and the result?

"The Vario came out on top, and we felt that if it could handle this job, it could handle any job," says Mr. Waters. "The other two machines had a horizontal feed into the stitch-fold, whereas the vertical feed on the Watkiss worked far more efficiently, it does seem logical for gravity to assist the process. It was quicker and easier to use than the others, and it also had a big advantage by the virtue of its modularity. If you need to extend it, you don't need another whole tower, just another bin."

Since the Watkiss installation, the Northumbria Police inplant has indeed added to its Watkiss system. The original specification was 2 towers with 9 bins on the first and 7 on the second, with stitch-fold. Now the Vario has 4 extra bins (2 on each tower) and the stitch-fold unit now also has a trimmer. "We got the extra bins in order to save time on our bigger jobs, such as 300-400 page drilled and ring bound manuals. We got the trimmer because previously we were having to guillotine our booklets on the head, tail and side before collation, which is hard to do accurately in any kind of quantity. We now cut the top and tail and let the Vario do the rest, and it makes a very precise, neat and professional looking booklet."

Space-saving was another factor in the decision to buy a Watkiss system. "After we bought the Vario, a rep from a local printing equipment supplier came in to try and sell us a rival collator, and he was amazed by the small amount of space being taken up by such a lot of equipment. He agreed that the way the stitch-fold-trim unit is housed under one of the towers is a real winner, and was very enthusiastic about Watkiss - needless to say, he gave up on the idea of selling to us," recalls Mr. Waters.

Paperwork is an important part of police work - ask any police officer how he spends his time, and the answer will most likely be "too long in the office, not long enough on the beat," but it's a fact of life and a legal requirement. The inplant will spend up to £30,000 a year on carbonless paper, and the production of multipart sets occupies the department for most of its time. Friction-fed collating has a reputation for marking problems with this type of work, but not the Vario, according to Mr. Waters. "Watkiss can supply different feed gripper rollers for different stocks, and we can always find the right combination. We've never had any marking problems with the Vario. One of the 20 bins is the suction-fed type, which we got for colour covers on art papers, but the friction bins are so good, we rarely have to use it," say Mr. Waters. "Where a sheet has a high ink coverage, we leave a 10mm trim - it there's any marking it is very near the edge, and this strip can be removed."

The department has a variety of single colour presses from Rotaprint, Itek, Heidelberg and Ryobi. It also has its own phototypsetting department and a comprehensive finishing section including a Polar guillotine, heavy duty stapling and saddle stitching for bigger books, a folding machine and a 4-headed drill. The force has its own Mac designers based in a separate Press Office producing all the internal artwork. None of the department's staff are police officers - all spent the early parts of their careers in commercial organisations.