Claudia Didley asked:

"I was wondering if anyone out there has any policies/procedures in place that they can share for Engineering project folders.  I am looking for retentions and a uniform way to create these project files (electronically).  The problem we are running into is that everyone wants to keep anything and everything in these folders forever, even when the project is complete.  Can anyone share what you do at your company?"


There can be darned good reasons to keep that stuff.  You don't say what the product is that's being engineered, but in my experience engineers can reuse drawings, test results, etc. for extremely long periods of time, and apply them to products many generations removed from the originals.  There's also the consideration of the limitations on action for the products you produce, and the jurisdiction(s) in which they're sold.  If your product has a useful life that is decades long, the original project files will definitely be useful in case of any litigations or product issues.  (I come from an aerospace background where the products may have practical lives that exceed 50 years, and where components originally built for one aircraft, satellite, or other product end up being used across many product lines.  In such cases, it may be extremely difficult to extract specific documents from project files that do NOT need to be retained.)

For creating the electronic project files, I'd recommend using a document management system (DMS) where the file structure can be controlled through some method OTHER than letting engineers come up with it themselves.  Law firms (I now work for one of those) are very good at this type of thing, since they want the same folder structures for the same types of legal cases.  Often, when a new legal case is opened, firms will generate a predefined set of folders under the case number.  Retention may be applied at the case level --with the same retention for all the subfolders.  Not all firms do this (really, there's no absolute consistency for how law firms operate), but it's a workable approach that makes managing the electronic content achievable.

Just my thoughts today.


Pilar C. McAdam, CRM
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Los Angeles, CA



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