Digital archive for a design office
We organized 8 years of technical documentation. Now finding a project from 2017 takes 14 seconds instead of an hour.
At the 'Kreska' office, documents ruled the people, not the other way around. 8 years of architects' work rested in 87 thick binders that took up a whole wall in the corridor. The Corporate Innovation Embassy introduced digital order there, respecting the team's old habits.
The challenge
The main problem was time. When a client called with a question about a project from 5 years ago, work in the office stopped. Two architects had to go to the archive and flip through papers for an average of 65 minutes. It often turned out that the sought drawing was on an old external drive that no one had labeled since 2019. Chaos in documents caused irritation and errors in communication with authorities.
Our approach
We applied our principle: without breaking what works. We sent a 3-person team that first looked at how the architects named their files. We didn't impose corporate standards. We used process diplomacy to convince the team to change their habits. We divided the work into stages: physical segregation, scanning with automatic text recognition, and setting up a local server with a cloud backup.
The solution
We built a system based on simple tags. Every project from 2016-2023 was scanned and described with four keys: year, city, investor name, and plot number. We installed one fast network scanner and taught 9 employees how to upload new sketches to the system in 3 seconds. Technology the human way replaced running to the corridor.
Results
The office regained control over its own history. Architects stopped wasting time digging through binders, and two new desks for interns replaced the cabinets. Everything works stably and without arguments over lost files.
Timeline
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January 15, 2024Inventory of 12 linear meters of paper documentation.
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February 2, 2024Server configuration and test implementation of the tagging system.
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February 18, 2024Workshops for the team on using the digital archive.
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March 14, 2024Final database handover and disposal of unnecessary papers.
"To be honest, I was afraid of this scanning. I thought we would drown in costs and work. The Corporate Innovation Embassy did it efficiently. They weren't the cheapest, but now finding a drawing from 2017 takes a moment. It saved our nerves."