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Addressing the Needs of a Regulated Industry
Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. (SI) is an engineering consulting firm dedicated to the analysis, control, and prevention of structural failures in nuclear and non-nuclear power plants. The company has seven branch offices throughout the U.S., as well as overseas affiliates in Korea and Japan. After 20 years in business, client-mandated long-term storage of project documentation became a cost and space issue. In addition, sharing information between the San Jose and Denver offices in a timely manner was important. Therefore, the company decided to implement an electronic document management solution.
Documents
Due to the regulated nature of much of Si's business, the company stored almost every document they generated and received from clients including: correspondence, calculations, figures, reports, faxes, engineering drawings, letters, and proposals. Every document was meticulously filed by project, document type and reference number in a detailed set of numbered manila filing folders. Even with this rigorous filing system, a second copy of each letter and structural stress report was stored outside of the project file. The project files varied in length and could be as large as five file drawers. The Denver office had 25 filing cabinets of active projects and the San Jose office had 130! Additionally, the San Jose office maintained a large off-site archive containing 20 years of records. Document retrieval time was about five minutes per request if the file was in the same office as the employee requesting it, or as long as a day or two if the file needed to be sent from the other office or accessed from the off-site storage facility.
Work Processes
Between both offices, approximately 40 engineers and project managers had direct access to the files. When someone needed a file, they would place an "out" card in the drawer to "sign-out" the file. The "out" card system was even used when files were mailed back and forth between offices. Maintaining these files involved a lot of people. In the Denver and San Jose office combined, SI employed four people to set-up and maintain the files. The engineers and project managers were also required to review documents and print and file their own e-mail correspondence. So important was the need for accurate filing,...