TDS Help Bradford Royal Infirmary with 3 Month Legacy Document Digitisation Project

The O&M manuals were stored in multiple locations but not catalogued and had been neglected over many years.

After an initial site visit to assess the extent of the legacy documentation and the clients requirements, we put together a proposal of how best to execute the project and provided fixed prices per item.

Once we received instructions to proceed, the O&M’s were removed from site by our team who attached basic folder number and box reference tracking information that was entered into a custom mobile application which generated the initial catalogue of all folders removed from site.

The O&M folders were then processed back at our facility with an initial assessment of the contents of each manual enabling us to create a more descriptive label which we could also use for the folder once digitised.

We scanned the contents of each O&M folder to a searchable PDF format, used the specific descriptive folder label as the file name and then updated the document with internal navigation of the main sections for ease of use. The large format drawings that formed part of the manual were also scanned and appended back to the new digital O&M folder.

Once the digitisation and updating of the O&M’s was complete, we updated the initial catalogue with the new descriptive folder labels along with any comments from our initial assessment of the documents.

Whilst the client was willing to allow the 200+ O&M manuals to be processed off site, they insisted that the 3800 + large format paper drawings were to be scanned on-site.
We were happy to accommodate this requirement as we understood their concerns about these irreplaceable documents and therefore set up our large format scanner on-site in their drawing archive room for the duration of the project.

The drawings were scanned, assessed, and catalogued according to the related service and building. The scanning of many of these produced a far superior document to the aged original.

Rather than simply handing this large body of information back to the client in a basic folder structure, we decided to go the extra mile and produced an intuitive digital holding portal with secure access based on the the intelligent auditing and review process we had used.  This process allowed us to categorise the information by site, building and service, ready for the client to upload onto their existing CAFM system without the need for further checks and reviews. Thus, enabling the client to utilise regular admin staff rather than specialised staff to check and review the documentation prior to uploading.

As the client wanted the hard copies returning, we placed these in plastic boxes for long term storage and updated the main catalogue with the relevant box references. A copy of the catalogue was placed in each box as a backup for ease of retrieval.

As mentioned previously, an additional benefit to the client from this project was releasing valuable building space to enable the Endoscopy project to proceed.