An integral part of the construction industry lies in planning. Before the building can get started, and even once it’s fully underway, plans need to be printed, inspected, and printed again, often multiple times over.

These plans are an essential component in communicating directions and ideas to the whole of the construction team. They need to be incredibly accurate and clear, and will need to be amended as the construction project proceeds. Digital printing can be massively helpful in this process, as we’ll explore below.

Digital printing vs lithographic printing

The traditional method of printing, lithographic printing, is in most ways entirely inappropriate for the construction industry.

Once the plate has been engraved, it’s impossible to change it; that’s amazing if you want to print thousands of copies of a carefully edited image or text, but not so great if you want to print 20 or so construction plans.

Digital prints come straight from a digital file; that file can be edited at any time during the process, even after the first print comes through if it’s not suitable, and you can print as little as one copy.

Benefits of digital printing

There are multiple reasons why digital printing is the more suitable choice for the construction industry.

1.    Precise

With construction plans, everything needs to be incredibly precise – if you spend hours in CAD perfecting a design, it’s imperative that it comes out perfectly. Digital printers have an accuracy level of up to 0.1%; professional printing services such as Plan Printing 24 use printers that can ensure that each line is perfectly weighted, with spatial misalignment kept to an absolute minimum.

2.    Fast

In construction, plans change rapidly, and it’s important that updated plans are made available as soon as possible. Digital printing is an incredibly rapid process – prints can be ready almost immediately, ensuring that hold-ups are kept to a minimum.

3.    Cost-effective

On top of benefits such as speed and precision, digital printing is a far more cost-effective option for the short-run prints required in the construction industry.

Lithographic printing is a complex process – the plates need to be engraved, and you also have to factor in the cost of the wasted materials used up during the process. Digital printing is essentially waste-free, and is overall a far simpler process, leading to a significant reduction in costs when it comes to short print runs.

4.    Editable

Lithographic printing is a fixed process – once the plate has been engraved, it’s impossible to change it without engraving a new plate. With digital printing, what comes out is entirely dependent on the file that you send to the printer.

If a print comes out slightly wrong, you can simply edit the file and the next print will come out differently. This means that you can perfect the image as you go along, making amendments as and when they’re required without incurring massive costs.

Hopefully this guide has given you a greater insight into the specific uses of digital printing, and how these uses relate to industry-specific requirements!

Further reading on digital transformation in the construction industry: https://www.datascopesystems.com/driving-forward-the-construction-industrys-digital-transformation/