Answer:
This was a question that was asked by a client during a discussion on the management of their records. A great question, and one that that I imagine has plagued the records management professional since the beginning of time. As a consultant I certainly do not have a definitive answer to the problem. However, I do have some insight and suggestions that will probably have people wondering if I have perfected the art of “compromise” or perfected the art of “giving up”.
This is not an easy question to answer as much depends on how the organization manages their records. Here are a few examples of engineering records that I have over the course of years in many organizations I have worked with.
. One organization sent a copy of their purchase orders to accounts payable and retained the
original.
My recommendation to the organization was to send the original document to accounting and retain a copy for internal use. While the accounting director agreed that this would be best business practice, they had not experienced a problem or write up by the State Auditor.
. Drawings maintained at multiple areas within the organization. Which was current?
I believe I have run across this problem at every organization that I had the opportunity to work with as a consultant or as an employee. While the original “as built” drawings were being maintained properly, the maintenance personnel on-site were making changes (redlines) on their copy of the drawings but those changes were not being transferred to original drawings. Staff using those originals would be unaware of those changes.
Ideally, all revisions would be accomplished by creating a new document that reflects the current information and copies then sent to the locations. If this updating was not done and/or they did not have a formal engineering function I had two recommendations to insure that the most current document was available to the organization:
1. Establish a written process and procedure for the management of changes to the engineering drawings. This option relies on the cooperation of the people who are making the changes to insure that all locations are aware of the change to the drawing.
2. If your drawing collection is indexed in an electronic document management system try to indicate the locations that have the drawings.
I currently use Microsoft™ Access for indexing, but it could easily be accomplished in Microsoft™ Excel or Word.
Again, this option also relies on the cooperation of the people making the changes to communicate with the person responsible for managing the drawings.
. Duplicate copies of bid, contract and other engineering project documentation:
There are many times when documents are maintained within the organization for different reasons and copies of the same document may have different retention periods. Also the person responsible for keeping the documents may differ within various organizations. For example; bid and contract documentation may be the responsibility of the purchasing department or law department and disposed of as established by the organizations’ retention program. However, both documents may be considered as part of the engineering project documentation and maybe retained for the life or sale of the property. In this case, the bid and contract documents retained by the purchasing and legal departments may be destroyed earlier as established by the organization retention policy. This is where you must work closely with your attorney and accounting when you assign a retention period to the documents.
When working with clients it is always a game of compromise to hopefully get their cooperation and establish the processes and procedures to manage the records in the long term.
BobDalton, CRM of Dalton Consulting
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