Cavendish Nuclear - Scanning Project

Cavendish Nuclear, formerly GEC the original consultant engineers who built all the nuclear power stations in the UK and many overseas approached us with a huge scanning project in 2014.

Our task was to scan, name and archive to an electronic data management (EDM) system approx 250,000 A0/A1 drawings – a large proportion of the knowledge base of nuclear power station design gathered over a 50 year period in the UK.  This would free up a building the size of a football pitch which would then be redeveloped.  It would also provide fast access to technical information required in the development of a new generation of Nuclear Power stations.

A project of this size can be daunting.  A projected 4,200 hours of scanning and more than 6,000 hours of naming/indexing needs planning and realistic time scales agreed.  In addition, confidentiality and security were paramount. A project manager was appointed and two scanning teams put in place.  All were security checked and only the project manager was allowed access to the main archive as it was built.  Transport of drawings and transfer of data back to the client was handled under strict controls.

The project was completed in about 10 months and on budget.  The budget including an extra 20,000 drawings towards the end of the project was £102,000 and the invoice total was some £2,000 less than this figure.