There’s no dearth of choice when it comes to document management systems, but if you’re an EPC project organisation, it’s very unlikely that a traditional system will offer lasting value. In fact, it’s more likely that you’ll end up having to replace your traditional DMS with an engineering-specific document management system sooner rather than later.
Why? The short answer is: the sheer volume of documents produced in a project make EDMS a necessity rather than a luxury.
In a typical project there are between one to ten thousand drawings and in a large capital project this number can even go up to 200,000.
Why Traditional Document Management Systems Fall Short for EPC Projects
Let’s take an example of a project with 1000 drawings; that is, 1000 original drawings. Now, the problem is that almost every one of those drawings will be revised ie it will be changed based on feedback from the client or a consultant or an internal discipline. We’re talking about typically three to four revisions at the very least. So straight away that means you’re dealing with close to 4000 versions ie 4000 documents per drawing. That in itself is challenging and the truth is, most projects will have close to 5000 drawings, realistically speaking, so if you calculate 5 versions each on average that’s about 25,000 versions of drawings right off the bat!
Remember also that collaboration is a vital part of the engineering process and during collaboration documents get shared between multiple people multiple times before getting approved and released for construction. Every one of those interactions and transactions has to be tracked and recorded. If you had a non-specialised DMS you would have to manually manage all of it – the documents, their revisions, the supporting documentation, the emails – which is humanly impossible.
So that’s the first problem with a non-specialised document management system.
The second problem is that documents get moved between different applications like Autocad, Primavera, MsProject, MsExcel, MsWord, pdf viewers, and other software used by the teams and you’re dealing with a variety of file types and formats. You need a document management system that can ‘talk’ to all these applications, and that means an integrated document management system not a traditional DMS, or again the sheer effort of managing multiple documents across multiple software will be more trouble than it’s worth. That’s the second reason.
Why an Engineering Document Management System (EDMS) is the Better Choice
Next, we have the issue of how comments and revisions are managed.
During a review, comments are generated. These comments have to be stored, compiled, and shared with relevant personnel, then the actions in response to the comments have to be captured and recorded. Sometimes the person responsible for making a change needs a reminder, sometimes there are questions and conflicts (each with its own paper trail) that have to resolved during the change process, and with a traditional DMS the documents may be digital but the onus of work falls on the human document manager.
Consider this: often questions are asked or concerns raised about a drawing. You might need to go through all the documents pertaining to that drawing to understand the concern and resolve it. Keeping in mind how many components and drawings are involved in a project, its easy to see how each drawing can end up with at least 10,000 associated documents, including the communications, emails, RFIs, memos, and so on.
Note: to be clear, maintaining documentation with traditional systems is possible. However, in real life it is improbable, because it would require an enormous amount of effort (ie a lot of expensive manhours) and it also opens the door for delay and error to creep in. Those delays and errors can have disastrous consequences down the line. It is therefore very difficult to get long-term ROI from traditional or generic document management systems.
Now consider a specialised document management system or EDMS.
Such a system would have the workflows for the various document-related actions and tasks already built in. Take for example the comments management process. Your EDMS would do the job of capturing and compiling comments after a review, it would share the comments to the relevant users, it would even send reminders if a change was not made on schedule. The human manager would still be in charge and handle the decision-making, but the burden of routine tasks (like maintaining and administrating the day to day transactions pertaining to tens of thousands of documents) would be off his shoulders.
Also, quality of output would be tremendously improved with an EDMS for the same reason ie workflows built in are based on best practices specific to the field of engineering design and so quality and compliance are more or less guaranteed. Work quality doesn’t have to be manually monitored, rather it is the automatic result of the built-in workflow. In other words you get higher quality with less effort.
Another advantage is when it comes to data retrieval, or search and find. Users can immediately find a document by name, date and other typical parameters or by content ie a string of letters or characters contained within the file, and that will of course make it easier to complete the deliverable on time.
In short, a specialised document management system allows you to focus on producing the best possible quality of work, and completing it on schedule and within the budget.
