A few years ago I was visiting a large truss plant in California and I remember being taken through a large room that was stacked to the ceiling with cardboard boxes. I mean this was a BIG ROOM - like a warehouse. I asked what was in all the boxes, and the guy told me, “Paperwork from our old jobs.” I said, “Wow! That’s a lot of paper!” He proceeded to tell me that they kept all of the old cutting lists and build tickets from each job; about a one or two inch thick stack of paper for each job. I asked, “What are you going to do when you fill up this room?” He said, “Oh, this is our third room like this. We’ll figure something out.”
As I said, this was a few years ago, but I think every component manufacturer then had a place where the paperwork from old jobs was stored. There were two primary reasons for doing this. First, the paperwork was saved for reference in case a customer or homeowner had a question about an old job. Second, there was a legal obligation to maintain records of the work done. Everyone who worked in the industry in those days recalls having to fish out an old job from the archives. The place chosen to store the old jobs was usually selected because it was either the dustiest place in the facility, or because of the high moisture content – which helped promote research to discover the ideal environment for the growth of mold.
Things have changed a great deal since then. Many reading this are well on their way to creating a more digital, less paper, workplace. Others aren’t sure there are really compelling reasons to change. In 1995, the book Being Digital got many people thinking about the cost savings of keeping information in digital form. I remember a few years ago seeing huge stacks of overnight and US Mail packages stacked up in the hallway at MiTek every day with sealed drawings for customers. Those designs began their lives electronically (on designer’s screens,) were printed on paper, put on trucks, put on airplanes, put on trucks (again) and then stuck in file cabinets. That’s seems incredibly wasteful compared to keeping them “digital” for their entire life as we do today with secured PDF files of sealed engineering drawings sent electronically via the Internet.
Creating your own document management system
What artifacts do retain for each job? The list might include digital things like the truss and layout files, and paper things like the a cost analysis or a signed delivery ticket. Make a list of the job artifacts you retain. If the list includes physical things (like paperwork,), ask “Are there any I can live without?” Why hold on to anything you can’t identify to real, specific purpose for?
Consider, “What would it take to make my archives 100% digital? (no paper)? There are two ways to achieve this. First, you can scan and save the documents you want to keep. The other is to create them as electronic documents to begin with, then print them if you need to. For example, rather than print your quotes and trusses directly to a printer, first create PDF versions of them, then print them. This way once they have served their purpose as paper documents, toss them knowing you have electronic copies if you need them.
MiTek has a built-in PDF creator right in the Engineering program for that can be used for truss drawings. And although the full-blown Adobe® Acrobat™ is expensive, there are lower cost options out there. A logical goal is to have all the job artifacts in a single location on your server. My list would include truss and layout files, individual truss shop drawings, sealed drawings, the quote and order sheet, shipping ticket, invoice, and photos of the load or the job site. Moving to “all digital” archiving requires getting serious about backups and off-site storage of information. No digital archiving solution is complete without an off-site, secure backup system.