Larry mentions a number of issues that should be considered.  And if I
ever went looking for someone with engineering document experience,
Larry would be at the top of the list.

>>They have now agreed to provide electronic copies.<<...>>I guess I
need to understand a bit better when you say you have "electronic
copies" what it is you actually have.<<<

I would make sure I standardized on a format.  Larry is right about
accepting electronic copies can bring you a bunch of formats that would
take a handful of techies and mountain of software to manage and
maintain.  However, if you were to receive a standard, image file
format, life might not be so bad.

>>>The files are big.<<<

Larry may have understated this point by a ton.  These files can be
really, really, really big.  Hundreds of MB's is not uncommon for a
single drawing.  If color is included, I have see many that will exceed
a GB in size.  We recently had a TIF image of a blue print plat map of a
ND city created with an engineering scanner.  The map included some
color shading made with a highlighter.  Size of file, 692 MB.  Files
this size not only take up a bunch of space but also bring down networks
and can take a half hour or more to load.  Regardless of the image
quality and the size of the monitor, you will have a revolt on your
hands.

>>These may be a PERFECT target for part of a "hybrid" system... where
your EDMS may have a thumbnail image and a pointer to a physical filing
system location for retaining the hard copies.<<

A great suggestion.  From the sounds of your post, the agencies
"reviews" the documents.  If so, a hybrid system may be the best choice.
Get a paper copy for the review process and retain it until the review
is completed.  Also request an image copy that can be retained for your
records.  Most folks will be able to generate a TIF image of the
document.  I would strongly suggest you consider investing in a software
like LizardTech's Document Express to convert the image of drawing to a
workable size.  Our 692 MB TIF drawing is now a svelte 1.7 MB DjVu file
that is easy to store and retrieve.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to scan documents that originated as
electronic files.  But then again, it is just as unreasonable to
negatively impact the entire purpose of the activity, reviewing the
files.  Finding a way to do both as efficiently as possible provides a
win in both columns.

Bill Roach, CRM
Enterprise EDMS Coordinator
State of North Dakota
ITD/Records Management
701-328-3589

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