If you work in the architecture, engineering, utility, or city planning industries; then you’ve most likely had to draw up a fair share of engineering drawings or blueprints. Private contractors and those in real estate also usually have to create floor plans and map out their properties. All of this work is crucial to the professions they fall under and need to be stored for future additions or simply for public record.
Unfortunately these paper drawings and blueprints tend to deteriorate over time and are difficult to store. If only there was another way…there is! Scanning and digitizing the documents. Once your large format document archives are in digital format, you’ll realize how great the benefits are.
Benefits of Large Document Scanning
For starters digital documents don’t crumple, fade, and rip like traditional paper documents do. Digital documents will stay pristine for more than a lifetime, picture perfect whenever you need them. This becomes increasingly more important as time goes on, especially if you aim to add or change anything on the original designs. Double checking faded plans, trying to discern if that line is a pipe or a power line, yikes.
Utility companies often have to perform maintenance on their water or power lines; but since they’re underground you need to look up the original engineering drawings to figure out where to go. If those documents were digital you could look at them with perfect clarity on a handheld device and make sure that no catastrophic mistakes occur, only good proper planning. If your company is fortunate enough to be hired to build something large, like a bridge that requires constant maintenance, you’ll want those plans preserved in top quality and easily accessible.
Having access to digital documents in the field makes technicians jobs easier. Scanning engineering drawings and other oversized documents will also reduce your storage costs and save you space. Millions of drawings and plans can be saved to a single compact hard drive instead of a room or two filled with file cabinets for storage. Freeing up that valuable real estate for more important functions alone could see a major return on investment. Furthermore, you could opt for cloud hosting the files, then they wouldn’t take up any space at all.
Document Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting the files comes with its own string of benefits, like insurance and peace of mind. If your facility had a fire today, then all of your documents could be lost, but if they were hosted on the cloud you could still have copies backed up and ready to print. Even with digital documents there is still the chance of server failure and corrupted disks, leading to a loss of files. So be sure to always keep multiple back-ups in case tragedy strikes, and consider cloud hosting for another layer of security.
Another benefit of cloud hosting is the access that it gives you. Let’s say you’re meeting with a client or someone calls you while you’re away from the office and they’re looking for a specific document or information. You can simply pull up the document or post on your phone and continue the conversation uninterrupted. Normally you’d have to go back to the office, message them later, or have someone from the office retrieve the document for you.
The time you’ll save and the professionalism you’ll show will propel your organization to new heights of efficiency. And just think of the shipping/travel costs when you need to send/show someone a document. Mailing large documents undamaged can be difficult and very pricey, but with digital you can just attach it to an email and you’re done. Easy, simple, FREE.
Large Format Document Scanning Process
Wide format documents will not fit in regular scanners, so special equipment must be used. Specifically flat feed scanners. These scanners have the document pulled through and picked up on the other side so there is no bending or damaging the original. The scanner is long but short, like an office light, only scanning a few lines of the document at any one time. This makes it a lengthy process but delivers great results with no damage to the originals in case you still want to hold onto them.
Large format documents are typically scanned in color or greyscale at 300 DPI and saved as TIFF Group IV files. From there, the images undergo some mild auto-adjustments to improve the contrast and color, and it’s saved to the computer. After that, the images may be cropped, de-skewed and indexed by specific fields of information so that they can be searched for and retrieved within a database.
It’s all that simple and will provide you and your business with countless benefits and endless amounts of saved time. Join the modern era and digitize your documents today.