Electronic archive of the project documentation

Electronic archive of the project documentation – one of the most interesting and popular industry IT solutions, interest in which grows every year. Projects on creation of such systems are specific, are often connected with problems of storage of the specifications and technical documentation. In the market there are enough solutions for the organization of electronic archive – under it usually mean an information system with feature set for the guaranteed document storage and flexible search. All nuances — in implementation, in development a part of the companies makes a start from the universal principles of work with design project documents, a part – from expansions of functions of traditional office-work. Anyway, first of all the electronic archive is the system facilitating work with electronic documents and allowing to provide more quickly to them access – to both the staff of the organization, and the third-party companies, including – to bodies of the state and non-state examination.

The ratio of number of paper and electronic documents will make in five years 50% for 50%, and in 10 years - 30% for 70%. The number of electronic documents doubles in a year, and the number of paper documents grows only for 7%.

The electronic archive of the project documentation based on STOR-M 3, will allow you:

• transfer the project documentation to an electronic form and to work effectively with it;
• structure and describe this documentation;
• make different search and selections, specific to this type of activity;
• see the complete information on all divisions, branches and objects;
• provide access to documentation to all interested persons;
• prepare design estimates sets for the customer and different inspection bodies.

For the organization of effective work with project documents an archive system should contain complete data on all objects in electronic form: structure of documents on each of objects for which the proyektnayadokumentation was developed; fields of descriptions of these documents and directly document files (scanned copies of originals of documents in the PDF or TIFF format) or initial documents in any electronic format (AutoCAD, PDF, Word, Excel, etc.).

Filling of an archive system can happen by different methods:

• documents of the third-party companies are brought in electronic archive by scanning (if they come in paper form) or by attachment to archive of their files (if documents electronic) in process of receipt in the company;
• own documents – by automatic creation of record in electronic archive from the available system of design and the subsequent attachment of a document file;
• archive documents – by line scanning and input of copies of archive documents in electronic archive;
• filling can be made in all divisions of the company, including remote.

Structuring and the description of information is made in process of introduction of data by one of the listed above methods. Structuring and the description of information is meant as formation of the directory of the project documentation and determination of fields of descriptions for a document group or one document necessary for further work with them. The structure of archive and structure of fields of descriptions of documents are individual for each company and reflect specifics of work with documents.

As soon as documents come to an archive system, you can organize access to them for the relevant staff of the company and also, in case of need, remote workers of divisions or branches.

The is more complete the project documentation in an electron archive is submitted, the great opportunities are given by a system on work with this documentation, namely – search and formation of sets of documents for the customer, for sending for an object or to inspection bodies.

For fast and convenient formation of documentation packages and sending them, for example, to the customer, in archive export of all data which are stored in archive, or their part in separate file html - structure is provided. Data are exported in the structured type also as they were stored in archive, with all attributes, descriptions and files. Further these data can be written on CD or DVDs disks and are transferred to the customer.

The flexible search mechanism allows to configure in the best way search fields, to optimize them for search of project documentation of this company that in turn reduces time spent for search.

Search and selections can be carried out by different criteria. The is more complete and documentation at a structuring stage is more deeply described, the more difficult and selections can be more complete. The possibility of carrying out such selections accelerates document retrieval process many times in comparison with search in paper archive.

Thus, you receive the effective tool for work with the project documentation accelerating this work and saving your means due to reduction:

• storage expenses and copying of paper documents;
• the number of people on processing of paper originals;
• time for search of the necessary document;
• time for preparation of sets of documents.