Snips from Larry:

> From: Larry Medina <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: July 10, 2012 4:36:05 PM EDT
> Subject: Re: BBC News - Is the paperless office possible?
> 
> I think you're BOTH right- and it depends on the situation, industry or
> usage pattern.

> We did, however, use CAD overlay drafting to send markups on a project we
> had that was being engineered by a firm in Houston, to our firm in San
> Francisco, for a pipeline being constructed in far Northern California for
> an extended period of time and things worked fine.  We would have monthly
> "signing parties" in Houston where we took custody of construction drawings
> and flew them back with us, but the CAD files were transmitted by FTP
> electronically.


You are correct Larry. We will eliminate paper when.......Ha Ha not going there! See just one day with Fred Grevin and he has "couthed" me up. When we convince everyone to use Ketchup on their hotdogs and eliminate mustard as a redundant condiment. It will never happen! Paper is simply such a cheap and throw away (after shredding of course) commodity.  Fact or Urban Legend: Documents in boxes stayed offsite on a shelf for 16 years on average, then when secure shredding came along a dramatic drop in shelf life occurred 16 to 10 years. With HIPAA, PII, PIPEDA and other laws management sees an advantage to shorter retention schedules and records management becomes more important. [Because ARMA has not promoted the tremendous benefit of the high quality records manager, your compensation has not increased relative to your real merit to the organization.] Now boxes are only on the shelf on average 7 years.  Great job records managers. But Tape Storage has increased dramatically and tapes can store massive volumes of records and these are typically vaulted. Note, in all the records center fires, you did not read about any massive tape losses. So tape storage offers several advantages. It is projected that "box shelf life" will settle in around 3 years which is a nice retention schedule on a hard copy. So we are not paperless but we are "Less Paper." 

Computers are temporarily printing more paper by habit but people will change and work production is way up world-wide. Did you ever thing you could carry 1000 pictures of your family and pets on your phone. Or your complete music collection. Or receive an email or text that calls you back into work immediately in a crisis. 

Our vaults are equipped with a Temp-R-Pager that can email or text three people in an event in the vault and the people it calls vary by event. In a break-in it can call the police, the Owner and Security Director, if the HVAC system breaks down, it calls the Owner, the HVAC repairman and the Facilities Director and in a fire, well you get it! This is done digitally so more of these automatic functions will help proliferate digital communication which in and of itself eliminate more paper.

Snips from:

From: "Alfaro, Vladimir" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: BBC News - Is the paperless office possible?


> From the development/construction perspective, I respectfully disagree, Hugh. while a good percentage of the approved, as-built, DD, etc., drawings are in fact electronic, these still need to be printed and managed for the normal course business.  For example, engineers refer to as built drawings almost on a daily basis and most of the time they are not at their desks and are in different locations or office spaces, etc. - hence the need to have a printed copy.

While hard copy in the job shack makes sense now, that is changing. With an a large flat screen or even iPad, I can pull up a drawing in specialized formats and the beauty is that I can blow up a detail and if it is still too hard to understand, then I call the architect and advise him that their details are not complete. A Bubba would say " Je ne te comprends pas! Un imbecile heureux!  but then the architect could immediately develop a detail and send it by email to the site so the contractor has the proper degree of definition. ( I will leave it to an Honorary Bubba to translate and probably even tell us whether this vault was constructed in Quebec, Paris or Southern Louisiana.)

On this recent job, the architect left it to us to solve their lack of resolution and our installer used a smart phone App to send it to our Engineer who created As Built Drawings which we then sent to the "Un imbecile heureux!" who then added them to the official set as the Owner required that "As Builts" must be immediately added to the job set.

The Contractor then wanted paper sets for their trailer but by then the vault was complete and my installer on to the next set. So I believe the move to "less paper" will be asymptotic in nature. As Owners realize that documents and prints stored in digital format, when done properly and stored properly, can be accessible for longer periods of time at a far more attractive storage cost, digital is the place to be.

If I was a records manager instead of a Bubba, I would make sure I inserted myself into the digital storage paradigm in as many ways as possible. I used paradigm for our long time RM's to bring back memories of the days where every paper had that word  in it.   (I would always spell it paradym but Larry would always correct me. To a Bubba a Pairadime is twenty cents.) 

Paperless is possible but not probable. ( I exclude Steve as he "Hates Paper" in his space.)

I receive calls all the time where they start with....."We have used one of your vaults from many years and I know you can't possibly have the plans handy but could you possibly provide the details so we could move it to our new office."

In many cases, I can have the Plan in front of me within minutes as we pull it from our electronic storage servers in-house and I send it to the client and we are discussing the new plan in short order. This affords us greater security for the clients and the re-engineering is far less expensive as the originals are right there in front of me.  Listening to you real records managers affected me and helped me design a system of paper and media for an effective records management platform. But I am as paperless as I care to be.

As Larry commented, the proper use of electronic construction drawings can assure that everyone is now working on the right set and that is a HUGE deal in construction. On one project, the vault area was to be one size, we designed the vault to that size, the structural engineer did an actual field measure after the room was re-sized but only he knew the room size changed and the vault was now in a different spot. That meant the structural footings were in one size and the vault was another.  We field modified the vault but here paper plans created a disaster.

In one of my vaults, a very respected Records Manager was touring us through the completed vault and I noticed that their collection included: glass plate photographic negatives, early video, old ledger books, minerals that no longer exist in nature, the human resource records on the C-Level management, paper documents, rare books and "The Great GrandFather Set" of the disaster recovery data. He explained that the tape storage logistics  were written into "the plan" and that the RM would oversee the vendor who protected the offsite disaster recovery data. He also performed the audits on the tapes at random times. And as part of this, the Data Mapping Plan was reviewed every six months by the RM to make the company litigation-ready. I suggested they have a mock discovery where potential litigation would trigger certain discovery requirements and they would see if they could perform.

One of my clients in the offsite media storage business, IG2Data Security in Chicago, has an Electronic Discovery Suite and they actually host the meeting for the performance under the requirement for a Data Map. The Owners are Intellectual property attorneys so they can actually provide the media from their vault, oversee the interaction by the two opposing clients. This Discovery has opposing counsel with laptops with data sets and the media is called up and certified as in safe, secure third party media vaults. In many cases, the better prepared party wins the litigation. This is where the records manager can play a huge role in moving the company into "Less Paper."

Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
[log in to unmask]
(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM


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