Picking & Packing

In Spring 2005, following a competitive tender exercise, we were awarded a three year contract to typeset, print and polybag examination papers for the Northern Ireland Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CCEA). So far this has entailed typesetting approximately 270 papers and printing over 200 exam titles for the January and June 2006 exam sessions.

Part of the requirement of the CCEA contract was that we set up a picking and packing operation to distribute papers to exam centres in Northern Ireland and other locations in the UK. We have recently completed the set-up phase with the creation of a picking and packing area within our secure printing department. Papers are counted, double-checked and bagged, checked again against a picking list and packed into boxes with bar-coded labels. A hand-held PC scans location and centre codes and matches these to data held on a central computer about each school’s and exam centre’s requirements. These procedures are designed to ensure 100 per cent accuracy – having left our premises, the next person to see the exam paper will be the candidate sitting the exam.

We can now claim to have one of the most sophisticated picking and packing operations for examination products in the UK, together with one of the most sophisticated printing facilities. This puts us in very good stead to win more work from CCEA as well as from other UK and overseas accreditation boards.