UNIFIED Enterprise Content Management

Electronic Document Management for the Small Office

Synopsis
Electronic document management has great potential to benefit a small firm, because every efficiency counts when staffing is limited. This article explores ways in which simple software tools can reduce the amount of time and paper spent on document production and processing, and can improve communications with clients and contractors as well.
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At my architecture firm, which specializes in smaller projects, I am the lead designer, secretary, bookkeeper, draftsman, IT manager, and janitor. Although I love doing these jobs, I’ve found that efficiency at each of them is critical to working them all successfully. Almost all the duties in an architectural office involve documents of some sort, either drawings or memos produced by office staff; or letters, submittals, and RFIs received from contractors and owners. In the course of processing all this paper–generating, mailing, filing, and throwing it out–I began to understand the potential savings, both in time and material costs, of converting most of these documents to an electronic form.

In the discussion below, I will first cover some of the ways in which electronic documents can be used in a small office without investing in major new technologies or an all-encompassing, rigid system. These procedures can be implemented incrementally, as needed and when they are really helpful. In the final part of the article I will touch briefly on the technical means of implementation.

The Less-Paper Office
We’ve all heard, at various times in the past decade or so, about the “paperless office.” I don’t work in one, and I hope I never will. Paper is a great thing, and it is well suited to many tasks. But where I’ve found that it improves my efficiency at work, I have made an effort to reduce the amount of paper that comes in and goes out of the office. The methods are simple:

I have slowly migrated most correspondence to e-mail. An e-mail message works best for basic communications–a question or comment, for instance. Organizing and saving all these messages is the tricky part. Devising a functional and searchable system is important.
For documents that require special formatting, such as meeting notes, contract forms, or change orders, the Portable Document Format (PDF) is a great solution. Clients, consultants, and contractors are all familiar with the Adobe Acrobat Reader, and they are able to read and print documents in this format. And when they do print it out, it’s on their paper, not mine. I’ll deal with methods of creating PDF files later in this article.

I generate invoices from my accounting software as PDFs and e-mail them to all my clients. This saves on paper, and e-mail receipts can be requested when necessary to verify that a client has received or read the invoice.

Recently I have also started producing all my drawings (large and small format) as PDF files. This allows me to e-mail check plots to clients or to deliver final documents to them in a format that they can easily print themselves at Kinko’s or any blueprint shop, even if they don’t have my pen settings or any other technical information.

I also generate PDF files from my three-dimensional rendering software and e-mail these to clients for quick sign-offs on design concepts. Raster (bitmap) images are compressed in PDF files, and a high-quality rendering can be made quite compact for e-mailing and on-screen viewing.

All faxes sent to my office are captured on my computer, and then I convert them to PDF if needed. This makes it easy to forward a fax to someone else as an e-mail attachment. It also saves paper on junk faxes, which can just be deleted from the computer without being printed.

I use the fax modem on my computer to send documents to people who do not have e-mail. Usually I print directly from Acrobat to the fax, thus bypassing paper again.

The time savings to e-mail a PDF file to four people rather than copy, address, stamp, and mail four sets of a paper documents is substantial. The cost savings in postage and stationery is easily a dollar or two per mailing. That adds up, and who can really remember (or bring themselves) to bill the client for it?

The Low-Budget Extranet
In the last few years I have been following with interest the developments in project extranets such as Buzzsaw, as they have promised time and money savings for architects. But these sites have always seemed oriented to larger projects with budgets to support the hosting company’s overhead. For small projects it is hard to justify the cost and complexity of a full-blown extranet solution. However, some of the features of project extranets, especially during the bidding process, would be very helpful for small projects.

Recently I implemented a simplified version of a project extranet for an addition to a Montessori preschool and kindergarten. This job was competitively bid to invited general contractors. My engineering consultants and I all produced our documents (drawings and specs) as PDF files. We posted the bidding documents to a special password-protected page on my firm’s Web site so that bidders or subs and suppliers could view the documents without having to go to a plan room. The files are located at www.jt-architecture.com/methods/bidding/childrenshouse/index.htm (to log on to the site, leave the username blank and enter password children).

This system was especially helpful when issuing addenda, as I could post an addendum on the site and send an e-mail to all bidders notifying them of the new posting. They and their subs were able to see the addendum immediately, and I did not have to fax or mail multi-page documents to each of them.

An unexpected advantage of generating our drawings in PDF form appeared when we created our checksets as PDFs in order to test the system. Adobe Acrobat has markup tools for PDF files, including redlines and comments. I was able to review and comment on all my consultants’ drawings without ever paying for check plots, and the drawings could be easily and quickly exchanged via e-mail. Also I could type my verbose notes instead of writing them–always a pleasure! To view a sample markup sheet, go to: http://www.jt-architecture.com/methods/bidding/childrenshouse/markup.pdf (password is same as noted above). To read the note text, double-click on the “post-its” that you see on screen.

The Web page was used the most during bidding, although I have kept it active because every so often I need to refer a supplier to this page. In this project, though, we don’t really need a central site and e-mail works just fine. If there were project participants who wanted to check in on our progress at certain times but did not need to be copied on every bit of correspondence, we could post relevant documents on the site for review. In addition to its low cost, the value of this simple extranet is its simplicity.

Electronic construction administration documents
One requirement of the project manual for the Montessori preschool was that the owner and contractor would purchase Adobe Acrobat and use it to generate and approve project-related correspondence (see section 01310 of the online project manual for specifics). Although the project has been under construction for only a couple of months, this has been very successful. We have been using the system in several ways:

I typically send out all supplemental drawings or memos as PDFs attached to e-mails, so the contractor gets a clear copy immediately. The contractor prepares pay requests from AIA electronic documents and prints them as PDFs, then applies digital signatures using Acrobat. These are then e-mailed to me, and I approve them with a digital signature before forwarding them to the owner and back to the contractor. In this way, the approval time for pay requests goes from days to hours. We can all electronically verify each other’s approval (Acrobat has the infrastructure in place for secure digital signatures) and these signatures are legally binding.

Change orders are also generated as PDFs. The owner, architect, and contractor sign the change order with a digital signature as it is circulated via e-mail. Again, approval time can be cut to a matter of hours with no need for a meeting.

Submittals could be processed electronically, but we have not done this yet. Submittal processing requires that the subcontractor and supplier be on board with this system, and so far that has proven to be more work than the time savings would justify. It would be easy to do, though, with the markup and stamping features provided by Acrobat.

In comparison to an extranet site like Buzzsaw, this type of system is more distributed and more flexible. It depends on e-mail and on people keeping copies of the files on their own computers rather than on everyone looking to a central server to store and display the documents. The obvious advantages and drawbacks apply.

Future Directions
The measures described above, as implemented at my office in the past year, have significantly improved my productivity. When I look at the remaining paper-based procedures in the office, though, I can identify four areas that could benefit from conversion to an electronic format.

Digital signatures on construction documents
As illustrated in the Montessori preschool project, my office generates construction documents electronically. However, the printed drawings submitted to codes are still signed by hand. If we could instead apply digital signature to the PDF files, it would allow them to be securely emailed or printed anywhere without a “wet stamp” or signature. For more information on this subject, refer to www.jt-architecture.com/methods/ds_architecture.pdf. Although we use digital signatures for change orders and pay requests, to apply this technology to construction documents we must address some specific requirements of state licensing boards. Digitally stamping and signing of architectural documents is legal in Tennessee (although each state has its own requirements). As far as I know, however, no one in our state is currently using digital signatures in a manner consistent with the state board rules. This is an issue that I hope to pursue further in the next year.

Electronic measurements
Once the PDF documents have been sent to the contractor or bidder, extracting useful information from these documents in electronic form is sometimes a challenge. Bidders usually have to print the documents out to do take-offs or other estimating tasks. In response to this problem I have developed a plug-in tool for Adobe Acrobat and Reader that will allow contractors and owners to make accurate distance and area measurements from PDF drawings. This plug-in is available online at www.linetype.com. My hope is that this plug-in will allow more extensive use of CDs in their electronic form.

Submittals
As mentioned earlier, submittals could be processed electronically, and doing so would realize considerable savings. I have always been amazed that I have to write all my notes out three times when reviewing a submittal; by commenting on a PDF file, it could be done once and then returned to the contractor immediately.

Payments
Although I already pay my phone bill and Internet charges electronically, I still write out checks and print envelopes for payments to consultants, the reprographer, and the courier service. If we could all get registered on paypal.com or some similar service, bills could be paid and received much more quickly. There is no technical obstacle here, it’s just a matter of convincing people to change.

Technical Summary and Resources
Firms that do small-project work usually do not have the support staff or the money for a complicated electronic document management system. The software and services listed here are all low cost, off-the-shelf solutions.

Adobe Acrobat (not the free Acrobat Reader) is the best way to produce and edit PDF files, either from typical office applications or from CAD software. It sells for $249 from the Adobe Web site and various software vendors. If you plan on doing anything significant with PDF files, it is well worth the money. In an office where several people might be creating PDF files and not everyone needs all the features of Acrobat, there are lower-cost, simpler solutions. See www.linetype.com/advice/pdfcreation for a summary.

For more information on producing PDF documents from CAD software, visit www.linetype.com/advice/cad. Also see the link above on PDF creation tools.

When you send a PDF file to someone as an e-mail attachment, it is considerate to include a link to the free Acrobat Reader download, just in case they don’t have it installed or if they have an old version. The download site is www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
A fax machine that can connect to your computer is a real asset. Incoming faxes can then be captured on the computer rather than printed, and outgoing faxes can be sent directly from your computer just by printing to the fax “printer” driver. Multi-page paper documents can also be scanned using the fax machine page feeder. This works fine for 400 dpi, black and white scans that can then be converted to PDFs. The fax machine can also serve as a printer if you need it.
Regular backups of your disk drive are always a good idea, but when the majority of your documents are electronic it is even more important. Invest in a backup system with enough capacity to save your entire drive every day, and consider using multiple tapes (one for each day of the week) for redundancy. The very first time you need it, you will consider it well worth the cost.