Engineering services
Geoconsult ZT GmbH
Geoconsult is an internationally well-known independent consultancy firm that provides global engineering services. It commissioned REISSWOLF Austria to digitise over 50,000 construction plans and around 4,400 folders and then to archive about 1,000 boxes in a REISSWOLF high-security archive.
The starting point
Geoconsult was founded in 1973 and has since then successfully carried out several thousand projects in over 50 countries throughout the world. The company has professional expertise in the planning and implementation of construction projects.
Each building project involves the need to use existing documents, to create new ones or both. This requires an enormous amount of archiving space and a clear classification system, so that the information from the construction files is available at all times.
Implementation
REISSWOLF delivered archiving boxes to the Geoconsult corporate head office in Salzburg, where the material could be prepared for transport in peace and quiet and then collected for digitisation in predefined batches. A precise schedule was agreed for the work and was strictly followed.
In total, around 50,800 construction plans and 4,400 folders had to be digitised. The records and plans were available in a variety of sizes, ranging from A5 to A0. Digitisation involved state-of-the-art high-performance scanners that were particularly suited for large formats. One major challenge was that the originals differed in quality, although in most cases scanning led to improvement.
Next, some of the physical documents were stored in a high-security archive at REISSWOLF Austria, while the rest were returned to the company in secure vehicles. The scans were saved to an SFTP server owned by REISSWOLF, thus ensuring that Geoconsult staff have secure access to the digitised records.
Once all documents are available in PDF format, it is possible to conduct a quick search using keywords, as the scanned files allow automatic text recognition. As a result, Geoconsult staff can even retrieve relatively old records with perfect ease, thus saving an enormous amount of time and abolishing the need for lengthy searches among old documents.
Moreover, the digitisation of plans has made it easy to handle a wide variety of formats, while also improving their image quality.
Digitisation meant that the company could save valuable storage space, while also giving the workforce a more efficient work routine, based on digital instead of physical records.
Customer feedback
„At a time when personal contact was difficult due to the pandemic, Reisswolf helped us greatly with its expertise. Handing over the data involved only a few points of contact, and digitisation proceeded at an almost unbelievable speed, so that our expectations were far exceeded. It wouldn’t have been realistic for us to digitise such a large data volume while at the same time running our normal business operations. Being able to search digitised texts gives us immeasurable added value. We are no longer handicapped by dusty physical archives in a basement. Instead, our archives have a new lease of life as a source of information, which is how it should be.” Thomas Flandera, Head of Modelling Team
