Engineering Document Management for Universities
Institutions for higher education, and universities in particular, are entrusted with maintaining huge facilities across a number of generations. Often referred to as the properties team, a small and often dedicated team are charged with operating and maintaining buildings that may reside in multiple facilities and in a number of countries. A facilities management role at its core, there is often a suite of tools that comprise document management, facilities management, and GIS. There may also be touch points with enterprise systems, such as project management, asset management and CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System) for project numbers, asset IDs and work orders.
To focus on the document management component, there are a few key requirements:
To manage the project lifecycle by receiving new and updated documentation.
To progress completed project documentation to maintain a current as-built/as-constructed library.
To archive completed projects and obsolete/superseded documentation.
To make all property information available across the facility.
To leverage data in enterprise systems.
Our experience with universities indicates that this can be delivered with a basic core structure for document management as shown in the diagram.
Based on a project number, documentation is revised and collected before being transitioned to Masters or Archived. The Masters branch provides a readily accessible library of as-built/as-constructed data for operations and maintenance.
In terms of the broader audience, Masters generally caters for in-house teams and Projects is generally accessible for external contractors. We work with two products that implement this approach to provide a controlled environment for document management. Lunr and Meridian are configurable solutions catering for project and as-built lifecycles.
Critically, these solutions provide search, view and mark-up via a browser, so that functionality is independent of iOS, Android or Windows. Additionally, a REST API enables integration with enterprise systems.
Please contact us to learn more about how these solutions deliver Campus Facilities Information Management, with a single source of truth for all facilities information.
