Via East Midlands, Nottinghamshire County Council, Drawing and Documentation Scanning
The Client
Via East Midlands is a TECKAL company wholly owned by Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) and works in close partnership with NCC to deliver a comprehensive range of highways and transport-related services across the County. Responsibilities include routine & emergency road & bridge maintenance, highway improvement schemes, management of street lighting and traffic signals, and provision of school crossing patrols.
The Brief
Sam Harland, Programme Manager at Via East Midlands, had been tasked with finding a way to digitise a significant part of the historic portfolio of drawings and records held at Nottinghamshire County Council relating to Section 38s, Road Adoption Agreements, Structural Projects, Drainage drawings and much more. This took the form of both large and small format drawings and documentation kept in cupboards, filing cabinets and large drawing chests at both Trent Bridge House in Nottingham and at Via’s Head Office site at Bilsthorpe, North Nottinghamshire. The objectives were three-fold; firstly to free up office space, secondly, to provide a high-quality backup in order to mitigate against any potential future damage and, thirdly, for future users to be able to access the information quickly and easily. In addition, the requirement to complete the work prior to an upcoming refurbishment programme provided a certain urgency to the project.
Scope and Implementation of the Project
Roughly 6,000 drawings and 60,000 pages of documentation were to be digitised to standard pdf format and indexed in a form so that future users could easily retrieve the data as and when required. All documents and drawings containing colour were scanned in colour. Given the size, complexity and timescale of the project, Tony Barnett (MD at John E Wright Ltd) appointed himself as Project Manager and worked closely with Sam Harland from Via East Midland to produce a plan to achieve all objectives within budget and on time. Tony quickly realised that the project would take more than 1000 hours of work and to complete this in about 3 months needed a top team from within John E Wright to be assembled quickly. The recent purchase of a new £50,000 colour large format drawing scanner helped to provide the very best possible quality currently available in today’s market.
The large project was split into 10 “Lots” and progress reports were submitted on a regular basis in order for the client to have confidence that the project was on track for a timely completion and to keep a close eye on the budget. Pickup of original documentation was supervised directly by Tony with John E Wright vans and drivers to ensure confidentiality and to eliminate potential mistakes.
As the work continued through the different “Lots”, each “Lot” was stored in the ample space available within the John E Wright Head Office on Huntingdon Street, Nottingham which is also where the scanning was undertaken. Quality control was carried out by the Project Manager with any errors corrected as each “Lot” was completed and then forwarded to Via East Midlands. In this way, the project was completed on time and on budget. The entire project fitted on a single 128GB memory stick.
The Outcome
Sam Harland said at the end of the project “working with the team at John E Wright has been straightforward and professional from start to finish. The digitisation work was completed efficiently, with great care taken over quality and accuracy. It’s made a real difference knowing our records are now secure, accessible, and future-proofed. I’d be very happy to recommend their services. What stands out most is the exceptional quality of the completed scans. Colleagues across Via have praised how excellent they look and appreciate having high-quality digital versions readily available.”
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