DeVries Business Records Management Inc., of Spokane, which does business as DeVries Business Services, is in a strong growth mode, says Patrick DeVries, who co-owns the business with his wife, Susan DeVries.

DeVries recently acquired a two-story, 44,000-square-foot warehouse at 1015 N. Dyer Road to expand the company’s commercial records center.

The company now has 140,000 square feet of secure warehouse space in three buildings. Its main office is located at 601 E. Pacific, east of downtown.

“We’re adding additional capacity to our document storage and record storage,” DeVries says. “I expect the new building will serve us for a long time, but I bet in another five years, we’ll have to buy another one.”

The warehouse space is primarily for storing clients’ hard-copy material, although DeVries Business Services provides other services, which also are growing, including media destruction, courier services, and office-moving and setup services, he says.

The company’s record storage facilities include a data vault for storing backup tapes and high-value, temperature-sensitive items, as well as co-locating computers for backup, recovery, and archival needs, DeVries says.

DeVries Business Services has an electronic tracking system that enables clients to have Web access to their materials, he says.

“When clients need their material, we’re able to retrieve items down to the box or file level,” DeVries says.

DeVries Business Services also can scan and send secure electronic copies, when the clients need information on stored documents.

The company has relied on technology to evolve from primarily storing boxes of paper to helping clients manage their information.

“When we started out, I was referred to as the storage guy,” he says. “Now, I’m more of a guy who keeps track of things.”

Patrick and Susan DeVries started DeVries Business Services in 1985 as a spinoff of a family-owned moving and storage company that operates separately today as DeVries Moving Packing & Storage.

“When I left the moving company, we had two employees, my wife, and myself,” he says.

Now, the business has 40 employees, including office staff, warehouse workers, courier drivers, and mobile shredding staff, he says.

DeVries says all employees are subject to criminal background checks, drug tests, and nondisclosure agreements.

“We’ve built a nice business package that ranges from cheap offsite storage to a full-service commercial records center,” he says. “We manage records with security and comfort until you tell me to destroy them.”

DeVries says media destruction services have become a vital aspect of the business.

“We shred paper and destroy metal from computer hard drives,” he says. DeVries Business Services also disassembles plastic parts.

“We collect materials in quantities big enough to recycle,” he says. “We’re probably making a pretty reasonable impact on the waste stream.”

DeVries also offers clients onsite document shredding with six mobile shredding units.

Through its courier division, DeVries Business Services picks up and delivers materials for its record-center clients.

The company’s security measures for transport, storage, and retrieval comply with the Health Insurance Policy and Accountability Act, he says.

“Employees are trained in medical privacy and what clients need to be compliant,” he says.

The courier division also handles internal mail for banks, medical offices, and the Spokane County Library District.

The company’s office-moving and setup services include furniture sales and installation. 

“We work for a couple of office furniture dealerships,” he says, including furniture installations in Eastern Washington for Steelcase, a large office furniture manufacturer.

DeVries says he anticipates continued steady growth in all of the company’s divisions, especially its core records-management services.

“We’ve always grown,” he says of the business. “It’s not cyclical or seasonal.”