Facilities Manager Spotlight: Interview with Danielle Paquette

by Tammy Mitchell | | Next-Gen Facility Manager

We know Facilities Managers take care of your facilities, building grounds and all of those engineering drawings. But what do you know about them outside of their role at work? We began this Facilities Manager Spotlight series to get to know the people behind emerald curtains.

Facilities Manager Spotlight:

Danielle Paquette, CFM

This week we were lucky to catch up with Danielle Paquette, CFM. Danielle is a passionate and results-focused facilities management professional with over 10 years of solid office repair, maintenance and space-planning experience in the field. She currently works in the healthcare industry.

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I’m a single mom of a teenage boy who lives with her parents and it’s the best thing I could have ever done for myself, my kid and my parents. Of course you can’t forget the star of the family our miniature schnauzer princess Kallie.

I like to run and my greatest running achievement was doing the 2016 Dopey Challenge at Disney World in Florida. You run 5km, 10km, 21.1km and end with 42.2km over four consecutive days!! I even got a Dopey tattoo on my calf to commemorate it!

What’s your favourite drink?

Water – kidding it would be a spicy Caesar

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Own it – whether it’s a decision you’ve made or a mistake you’ve made.

How did you get started as a Facilities Manager?

After doing home daycare for a year after having my son I wanted to get back into the workforce and there was contract position for a facilities clerk (reception) available and I was successful. A few months after the Facilities Assistant put in her notice of retirement so I applied as a long shot.

From there I advanced to Coordinator, then Supervisor, Manager, Interim Director (position was eliminated) so I went back to Manager.

Do you have any stories you’d like to share?

So many stories but one that has stayed with me so vividly throughout the years sort of sums up the most basic piece of the role but also one of the important pieces.

It was my first move/renovation so there was a lot to take in and try to manage. We had just completed the first phase and staff had to pack up and label their belongings including chairs. The next morning I arrived early and there was one employee who came to me almost in tears because someone apparently took her chair and left her with another one.

At first I thought this was a joke, who the hell cares most of the chairs are the same. Anyway she was incredibly upset so I offered her mine because it was almost the same chair. She was incredibly grateful. I remember going home to tell my family about the craziest thing and really couldn’t believe a grown woman was that upset over a chair.

What I came to realize was that wouldn’t be the first time I had to soothe somebody with a piece of equipment and an ear to vent. A big part of our role is bringing space and people together in a cohesive way so you have an efficiently run workplace.

We finish the interview and you step outside and find a lottery ticket that ends up winning $10 million. What would you do?

Wow – the possibilities! I would make sure my parents, myself and my son were set in a comfortable location (likely right where we are now only no mortgage!). Set aside money so I don’t have to worry for my retirement. Make sure my cousin could retire and be okay and give a bit to his two boys. Make sure my son was okay – he would still need to work but he would have an “emergency fund”. Take my parents and son on an African Safari and an Alaskan Cruise.

Then the fun begins! I would set up a place mainly geared for adolescent/young adult boys who are struggling. Maybe they’re homeless or just down on their luck. It would be in town so they had amenities. There would be a “motel” area where they could crash for a short time so they didn’t have to be on the streets. I would work with the community to get community service activities for them, counselling services, job skills. Let them know the world hasn’t turned against them and that there’s hope but they also need to work for it.

What makes this different from other “group homes” you may ask?! Well, first I would have a cool name for it. It would have rules for sure but it would also have a bit of a carefree feeling to it. A place where they could take part in something, maybe “own” a piece of it. It would also have professionals available for different things but most importantly it would be run by a mom who thinks given the smallest opportunity you can make someone feel good about themselves – and I’m pretty cool!

Thank you Danielle, for taking the time to speak with us in our Facilities Manager Spotlight series!

What does a Facilities Manager do? FM’s tell you in their own words.

by Tammy Mitchell | | Next-Gen Facility Manager

The world as we know it changes very quickly, but never has Facilities Management grabbed so many headlines, as it has in the past year. How we move forward post-pandemic with work spaces, buildings, malls and public venues, is changing at such a rapid pace. The demand for Facility Managers is expected to grow exponentially by 2026. But what does a Facilities Manager actually do?

The Roles and Responsibilities of a Facilities Manager

A quick Google search will tell you a vast array of responsibilities of a Facility Manager, including:

  • Maintaining Facilities, including grounds, engineering drawings and building maintenance
  • Overseeing contractors and staff
  • Ensuring the building is up to code with health and safety regulations
  • Creating a budget for the facilities operational costs
  • Improving operations and building functions

Maybe you’re thinking, that sounds up my alley. I’d like to be a Facilities Manager. Perhaps you’re interested in the future of healthy buildings, including overseeing the infrastructure and maintenance of a given environment. At the same time, you love organizing and ensuring a facility is running smoothly.

Is that all a Facilities Manager does?

The IFMA – International Facility Management Association, wanted to find out the answer to that very question. They recently posed this tongue and cheek inquiry on their LinkedIn account, asking the following:

Tell us you’re a facility manager, without telling us you’re a facility manager.

IMFA – International Facility Management Association

Facility Managers everywhere replied. In other words, they told in their own words, what their job really entails.

Not only were they accurate, they were creative and funny! At the same time, they were honest.

Here are some of our favorites:

“I manage chaos.”

– Jermain DeFreeze, Facilities Process Manager

“I have 2 people complaining in the same work space. One is too cold the other is too hot.”

– Corvin Dozier, Facilities Manager at JLL

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” – How I respond to busted pipes, broken security gates, it being too hot/cold and when the coffee maker doesn’t work.

Michael Porter, Facilities, Maintenance and Construction Manager at Aflac

“I go to bed every snow storm praying my generators do not have to get woken up either. My wife also tells me to stop pointing out OSHA violations while we are out shopping.”

– Danny Moore, Facility Manager

Are your lights are on, and the the heat or air conditioning is going at work? Is your access card working? You can thank your Facility Manager for that peace of mind.

“The lights are on, its warm in winter and cool in summer, magically your access card works everyday, the coffee machines are full and the dishes done and packed away, your bins are empty and clean and the bathrooms sparkle in every building on every floor, the numerous plant rooms and chillers chug away without any weird noises and the access gates let you in and out all day and night long. The lawns and grounds are green and lush and the walking path weed and leaf free….. silent magic…..”

Heather Walker-Broose, Facilities Manager Snowy Hydro Limited

“A magician wearing superman costume, walking with my family in weekends looking out for any defects in any place we visit, specially toilets”

Heba Kamal PMP, FMP Instructor CEM, General Manager at Enova

Their work never stops. Weekends? What’s a weekend?

*gets phone call at 2am* “Hey Will, everything is broken”

– Will Richeson, Project Manager at Ameritech Facility Services

“It’s February and it’s hot in your room? You’re welcome.”

– Daniel Pego, FMP, Facilities Operations Manager at NYU Langone Health

“I can help you find a mop, tell you if the conference room is available, activate your badge to give you access to the garage, inform you when the window cleaners are coming, and make sure your office is at the right temperature. On top of all of that, if I don’t know how, I surely know who!”

– Arie Baker, CPRP FMP MBA Certified Post-Crisis Leader

They’re always there to save the day. Again.

“The Phantom who serves at low profile round the clock without seeking any attention to ensure no disruption to normal Operations in the Facility .. sometimes we have to reveal our identity and go public to contain emergencies :)”

– Adnan El Cheikh Mohamad, Facilities Management, Project Operations

As a result, needless to say, we are truly grateful for all Facilities Managers out there. As well as their sense of humor!. If this sounds like a career you’d like to purse, get to know them on LinkedIn by following the hashtags: #FacilitiesManagement, #FacMan and #FMTech.

For the full thread and many, more amazing comments from talented Facilities Managers all around, join the conversation on IFMA’s post on LinkedIn. Similarly, if you’re a Facilities Manager and need help with your engineering drawing management, have a conversation with us – we can help with you that.

A Non-Carrot-and-Stick Approach to Better Metadata

by Tammy Mitchell | | Phase 2: Drawing Management Software

Recent surveys suggest that AEC companies and facility managers are embracing digital transformation at record-breaking speeds. Partially fueled by the black swan event of 2020, digital transformation has become the table stakes of modern facility management and engineering. And it couldn’t come at a better time. In this article, we will discuss an approach to better metadata.

Back in 2019, McKinsey estimated that construction companies could see 15 percent cost reductions. And 6 percent productivity gains from simple digital transformation strategies. Facility managers saw nearly equal gains. Now, in 2021, those value drivers are being realized by thousands of companies across the globe. But digitization comes with its own set of challenges.

In a non-digitized world, engineering drawings were labeled and put into buckets, boxes, and flash drives. Now, those engineering drawings are digitized and sitting in the cloud. So how do you find the right document without those labels? After all, what’s the point of digitization if you’re bleeding time and revenue trying to find the right documents at the right time?

The answer to these woes is something called metadata. This helps you organize and explore your precious drawings. But there’s a problem. This game-changing data organization technique comes with a few pain points.

What is Metadata and Why is it Important?

While there are a few definitions, it’s easiest to think of it as data that describes other data. We like to use the leftover analogy. Let’s say that you cooked a nice big pot roast. You didn’t finish it all, and you want to store it in the freezer for leftovers. Easy enough! But when you open your freezer, you see a ton of other food containers you stored in the past. How will you know which container has your pot roast next time you open up the freezer? Obviously, you could look through each container in the freezer. But that’s time-consuming and energy-draining. Instead, you whip out a label and sharpie and write “pot roast 1/1/2021” on the container. That label is like metadata. It describes what’s in the container. Allowing you to easily find the right leftovers next time you take a peek in the freezer.

Now, let’s apply the freezer analogy to engineering drawings. When you store your engineering drawings in a big database, how do you find the right drawing at the right time? You use metadata. It describes the data in your drawings for you. So, instead of searching through every engineering drawing in the bin, you can input a quick search term and find the exact drawing you need.

Types of Metadata

There are three types of metadata that can be applied to engineering drawings (and data in general):

  1. Descriptive: This type is used to make data searchable. You could label an image in a drawing with tags, add titles to documents, as well as use keywords to discover drawings based on specific criteria.
  2. Structural: This type is used to organize data in a database. For example, you can add types and versions to engineering drawings to help you find the right one. You could also describe how a specific drawing is related to other drawings in your database.
  3. Administrative: This type is used to describe the administrative needs of drawings. For example, you can add permission levels, dates, as well as drawing types.

That’s it in a nutshell. Easy peasy, right? Or… is it?

Common Pain Points

We all hear about metadata as this magical, problem-solving data mechanic. But an unfortunate number of companies struggle with it. There are serious pain points hiding beneath the seemingly simple premise of metadata, including:

  • Manual labor: Adding metadata to every engineering drawing is labor-intensive. You have to classify every image, categorize every series of drawings, and add robust, comprehensive, and uniform tags. It’s not easy. And it certainly eats away at your time. Worse yet, manual data entry introduces errors. Research suggests that the error rate for a single manually-entered spreadsheet hovers over 30 percent. Metadata mistakes can lead to serious headaches. You won’t be able to find the right document, and incorrect metadata can actually make document retrieval more difficult.
  • Complexity: Remember those three categories? There are hundreds of types of metadata within each of those three categories. You need to apply all of them correctly on every single drawing.
  • Departmental frictions: Chances are, your engineering drawings intersect multiple departments. Finding consistency between those departments in terms of metadata language is challenging.
  • Governance: Metadata requires governance. Access privileges, compliance, and a bucket of other pain points come into play when you start trying to pool engineering drawings together under one roof.

Wait… so is it bad? It certainly seems like metadata is useful. But those problems seem pretty dire. What’s the solution?

echo + Metadata: A Match Made in Heaven

The secret to leveraging metadata correctly is automation. Manually entering it is a recipe for disaster. And trying to build ad-hoc metadata structures can leave gaps between departments that impact “searchability.” The act of data cataloging and tagging is notoriously time-draining. This can defeat the purpose of using metadata in the first place.

When you’re dealing with something as mission-critical and facility-impacting as engineering drawings, every mistake counts. You need pitch-perfect metadata structures, and you need those structures to be holistic and uniform. That’s why we created echo. Not only is echo the world’s most powerful engineering drawing platform. But it also automatically catalogs over 15 metadata points from every drawing uploaded into the system. In other words, echo streamlines drawing ingestion, digitization, and categorization all under one roof.

Are you ready to digitize your engineering drawings in a way that makes them easy to find, retrieve, and discover? Contact us. We’ll help you embrace the real value of digital transformation.

Scanning Engineering Drawings: Scanning DCM Vs. Scanning House

by Tammy Mitchell | | Phase 1: Hands-On Drawing Management

Thinking About Digitizing Your Engineering Drawings? You’re Not Alone! Ninety-one percent of business owners who are on the path to digitization. Whether your motivation is investing in an engineering drawing digitization platform, or simply trying to reduce your paper wastage, you’ll need a top-tier service to convert your valuable drawings to a suitable digital format.

So, how do you spot the right scanning service? What should you do post-scanning?

Choosing Between Scanning and Platform: Your Engineering Drawing Solution

A whopping 98 percent of engineering and construction companies recognize digitization as the future, leading to a surge in digital transformation in AEC and facility management. The initial step to digitization almost always starts with documentation. Filing cabinets, costing over +$2,000 annually for maintenance and occupying 30% of employee time, are an evident choice for starting the digital transformation.

So, how can you digitize these documents?

One of the simplest and widely suggested solutions is scanning. You send the documents to a scanning service, get them digitized, and arrange them in a digital system. That’s often where engineering drawing projects begin. Dusty bins of documents and old flash drives aren’t secure, easy to navigate, or readily available. They are thus often dispatched to scanning services for conversion.

While there’s no issue with this digitization method (after all, we offer scanning services ourselves), it’s good to remember that scanning services are essentially stopgap solutions rather than comprehensive problem solvers. Post scanning, you’ll need to address several issues:

  • Where are your files going post-scanning?
  • What filing system do you use?
  • What are your naming conventions?
  • How are you sharing, using, and managing these digital documents on a larger scale?
  • How do you ensure format consistency across departments?

Making the Shift to a Digital Platform

While document scanning is an excellent initial step, eventually, you will need to transition to a digital platform—think echo—for your engineering drawings. Scanning is undoubtedly effective for temporary bursts of digitization, but it isn’t entirely transformative.

After determining that scanning fits your needs for both digital and physical issues, you need to consider where to get your documents scanned. Most businesses rely on traditional scanning services, effective for marketing and sales documents. But, engineering documents call for exceptional care and deserve distinguished treatment. At DCM, we offer top-tier engineering drawing scanning as kind of an “unlisted” service. Let’s delve into how our service compares to traditional scanning services when it comes to engineering drawings, our specialty area in digitization.

"Scanning Houses" for Engineering Drawings

The Reality of Using Standard “Scanning Houses” for Engineering Drawings

Should you choose a regular scanning service to digitize your engineering drawings, prepare for a standard outcome. This typically means one preset is applied across all your documents. They get scanned with no specific editing, cropping, or customization. In essence, the resultant scan might be as good (or bad) as that which the small legal practice down the block gets. Needless to say, this is a far from ideal situation.

We often find new clients looking to migrate to our echo platform after experiencing disappointments with conventional scanning houses. Once these clients come on board and digitize using our system, it’s common to find a significant portion of their drawings poorly formatted, devoid of critical elements, mislabeled, or simply blurred.

We aren’t knocking on scanning houses. They just aren’t built to handle engineering drawings. This is such a niche space. So, it’s a little unfair to expect them to have the right equipment, experience, and set up to handle these drawings. But the point still remains, scanning houses do a poor job at digitizing engineering drawings.

However, the fact remains: when it comes to digitizing engineering drawings, typical scanning houses often fall short of expectations.

The Drawing Specialists vs. Traditional Scanning Houses: The Key Difference

DCM stands out with its custom scanning equipment explicitly tailored for engineering drawings and a team of specialists with 69 years of combined experience. Our setup is directly aimed at addressing your specific needs.

How is DCM different from traditional scanning houses?

  1. Caters each scan to the paper type and quality of your engineering drawing
  2. Repairs engineering drawings as needed, including taping, removing staples, etc.
  3. Crops and edits engineering drawings as needed
  4. Rotates images to fit the proper orientation before each scan
  5. Completely cleans images up, including removing cloudy, blurry, or smudged areas
  6. Custom-names the file to meet the needs of your system
  7. Scans in the proper DPI settings for each drawing
  8. Leverages world-class Quality Control Process (yes, it’s the same one we use for our platform!)
  9. Fully-audits of each drawing before scanning, eliminating duplicates and irrelevant drawings in the process
  10. Completely understands the end-to-end lifecycle of engineering drawings, and leverages those insights to produce the best-possible scans at the highest possible quality
  11. Has the capacity to handle large quantities of drawings (e.g., we’ve had clients with +150k drawings to convert)
  12. Does an on-site gathering and packaging of engineering drawings

In summary, DCM excels in handling engineering drawings from every angle.

It’s that straightforward.

Ready to Digitize Your Engineering Drawings?

We’re ready to help you digitally with over 60 years of experience and cutting-edge technology, DCM is prepared to guide your facility through a seamless digital transformation, one drawing at a time. Embrace the future with The Drawing Specialists and start your journey towards digital transformation – one carefully chosen drawing at a time.

Fill out the form below to discover more.

Whose Job is it to Tidy Blueprint Files?

by Tammy Mitchell | | Phase 1: Hands-On Drawing Management

It can result in significant problems if there is no clear person in charge of tidying blueprint files. Our drawing management software can significantly increase the accuracy as well as the efficiency of your blueprint file organization system. 

What are the common issues associated with having no one in charge of your blueprint files?

It can be difficult to quickly find any piece of information in a large number of files if there is no designated person to tidy up blueprint files.

Problems Go Undetected

It’s hard enough to keep engineering drawings organized. Moreover, adding an internal process to keep these drawings up-to-date with the changes can feel daunting. Having a designated person in charge of tidying up your blueprint files regularly can go a long way toward catching and fixing small issues right away.

 

Disorganization Increases Over Time

Not tidying up your blueprint files regularly can lead to more significant disorganization over time. Large numbers of employees that use your files may have different ideas of what “organized” means. In addition, a filing system that gets messier over time and not cleaned up can result in losing information. Or not being able to find important information when you need it. 

Issues Can Still Arise if Someone is in Charge

Having a dedicated person in charge of maintaining your blueprint files can minimize many of the most serious issues that can occur if no one is keeping track of them. However, human error and workplace inconsistencies mean that problems can still occur. 

Overload of Files

Depending on the size of your company, you may have too many blueprint files for one employee to manage efficiently. Large or excessive files may not fit properly on the program that you want to use. And they may be too much for one person to keep organized. This is especially true if you have more files than you need. In addition, many businesses only need about 30 percent of the files they have.

Employee Turnover

Passing every detail of your file management system from employee to employee can be challenging if your company experiences frequent employee turnover. Particularly in the blueprint file manager position. Important information can be misplaced, passwords can be forgotten, and new employees may adopt slightly different organizational systems over time. 

Unclear Processes

A company with a large number of blueprint files may require multiple complex processes to effectively manage them. A person may not have a thorough understanding of every step of maintaining your organization. After all, how in the world are you supposed to know how to catch up on years of no drawing management? You didn’t get a degree in “Drawing Management” and neither did anyone on your staff.

Misalignment Across Departments

Large companies that are comprised of several departments may experience challenges surrounding communication and organization across departments. A blueprint file organizational structure or goal that works well for one area may not be thoroughly implemented in other areas. 

Automate Your System to Prevent Problems

Having someone in charge of tidying up your blueprint files is certainly better than having no one in charge. It’s a helpful approach to create a relatively automated system to manage file organization. This method automatically keeps your blueprint files organized. It also ensures that the various departments within your company are adhering to the same procedures and eliminates human error to minimize any issues that may come from employee turnover, lack of clarity of processes, or other inconsistencies. Our custom drawing management software was designed with the unique needs of your company in mind. It also offers a variety of highly-customizable options for automating your blueprint file organization. 

The Drawing Specialists are here to help you find modern solutions for keeping your blueprint files organized. Contact our Drawing Specialists today to get your customized strategy for efficiently managing your blueprint files!

Outsource Conversion – 8 Factors to Consider

by Tammy Mitchell | | redraw - CAD Conversion Articles

Outsourcing your business operations is an essential step in organizing your business without hammering yourself. The benefits of giving away some of your services to third parties make lots of sense. It solves the problem of hiring and training new talent, which can be more costly than outsourcing the same services.

But before the prospect of reduced operation costs gets you excited, outsourcing isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Here are 8 factors to consider before outsourcing some of your business operations to make the process a success:

Financial Factor

Before you can outsource some of your business activities, consider the cost. This means that you have to ensure you stay within the budget of your firm, and that the outsourcing process would result in reduced costs. There would be no point outsourcing processes if it leads to increased costs and financial stress for your business.

Get a clear picture of the cost of outsourcing some of your business activities before you contract your vendor. Understand the geographical location of the vendor and the economic infrastructure of the place before you invest in them. Don’t necessarily go for the cheapest options because quality may be a problem.

Research

You aren’t likely to find a good outsourcing vendor for your business by luck. A little research should come in handy to help you determine their reliability and trustworthiness. Visit their websites and review sites to see what others are saying about them. See if you can find any news about the company, or approach them personally and ask for quotation of their services.

Some factors you may want to consider when digging out the history of the vendor include work portfolio, client longevity and professional testimonials. Find out if they have any returning clients, or long term engagements. These factors would show that this particular vendor has a history of quality work.

Business Insights

The best way to gain the business insights of a company is through its social media account. The data on their social media account will tell you volumes about their work culture, so you can see it fits in with your company. It would also help you understand the people and processes within your selected vendor company.

Obtaining the business insights of your outsourcing vendor is important because you don’t want to end up with a partner whose culture is different from yours. It is good to be in a position to take a closer look at the company without any manipulation.

Bridging the Time Barrier

Outsourcing is your best bet when it comes to bridging the time barrier. This is because it can help you achieve the 24-hour work cycle. Leaving your office at the end of the day would not necessarily mean the end of your operations. Assign the urgent project deliverables to a third party, and have them completed the following day by the time you report to work.

If you are looking for the best vendor for outsource conversion, it is important to check if they operate on a 24-hour schedule. You will then be assigning those repetitive tasks at the end of the day, and continue your operations in the morning.

Innovative Mindset and Infrastructure

When choosing an outsourcing partner, it is vital to consider their mindset and infrastructure. In this era of i9 processors, it would be unfortunate to go for a Celeron machine. The software and hardware in use in a company determines their efficiency and work rate.

But you could also judge a company by its values and philosophy by speaking to them on a personal basis. However, a close look at their infrastructure will tell you if they fit the bill. Such factors as innovative mindsets play a great role in accomplishing tasks.

outsourcing-key-on-keyboard

Quality Workforce

One reason you are looking to outsource some of your business processes is to take advantage of the third party excellent talent pool. You may not have the resources to sustain a skilled team for certain operations but can outsource those processes to a reliable third party. But this means that your preferred vendor should have a pool of talented and quality workforce to help meet your needs.

Since you are looking for quality workforce in your outsourcing vendor, consider the following points:

  • Workforce distribution to the relevant personnel
  • Factors to consider during times of crises
  • The planning and mitigation of all the processes

Non-Disclosure Agreement

Since this is the most crucial of the outsourcing business, you need to know all the requisite details of your work pendulum and the services your outsourcing vendor has on offer. The Non-Disclosure Agreement covers you when it comes to data security, patents, and protection of business information.

The Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is a vital aspect you should embrace before entering into a contract with your chosen outsourcing vendor. It ensures all your business interests are safe, and that the vendor does not put the reputation of your business in jeopardy. The document covers you legally, and provides a framework for successful outsourcing cooperation.

One-Stop Shop

While you may want to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket, outsourcing your business operations with different vendors can be quite difficult. The best practice is working with one outsourcing vendor who then becomes your trusted partner. You will have a more fulfilling relationship than a one-time service provider.

When looking for a strategic partner to outsource conversion, consider one that provides the range of services you need commonly to avoid having to spread your activities to various vendors. It saves the energy and time you would have used to look for different partners every time a need arises in your business. Just look for a one-stop shop.

Final Word

If you are going to outsource conversion successfully, be sure to conduct research and check the business insights of your prospective partner before engaging them. Look for an outsourcing vendor with an innovative mindset and can complement your 24-hour work system. Don’t forget to sign a non-disclosure agreement before handing over your data to the third party. If you are looking for an outsourcing partner, give the Drawing Specialists a try for FREE.

Get my customized plan now!

Ten Echo DMS Enhancements In The Next Release

by Tammy Mitchell | | Phase 2: Drawing Management Software

Yes, our users love managing their drawings and getting results in 1 click using echo DMS; we have been listening carefully to your feedback and have some exciting enhancements launching soon.

We will keep you updated on social media with a release date. Meanwhile, follow DCM on LinkedIn.

Here are Ten (10) Echo Drawing Management Software enhancements we are delivering in the next release:

  1. Get Started dashboard: shortcuts to use your most valuable tools from across echo DMS at a glance
  2. Key Plans: the ability to utilize Key Plans as a searching method practice
  3. Project Search: the ability to search for drawings/blueprints/plans by the project using a brand-new tool in echo
  4. Project Years: projects now have optional year values, which can also accept multiple years as a search range
  5. UI Improvements: the UI has been modernized to utilize current web technologies
  6. Mobile Compatibility: the core UI has been upgraded to better support mobile users on all mobile devices
  7. Customization: users can customize their system to reflect their usage patterns
  8. Breakout Tools: users can view building breakouts in a brand-new echo tool
  9. Live support: users can interact with the chatbot and live support resources
  10. New echo Coaches: All users now have access to the echo coaching team for on-demand support to ensure every echo search is a success!

Bonus enhancements:

  1. New discipline & author-based versions of the echo DMS search wizard
  2. Speed enhancements for quicker echo DMS search results
  3. We are listening to performance improvements to support and manage feedback

“If you can search the internet you can manage drawings with echo Search! ”

We don’t want to brag but we are the leading drawing management company!

Digital drawing management with echo has many cost benefits:

  1. Accurate document retrieval with 1 click echo search
  2. Zero physical storage costs
  3. Free disaster recovery
  4. Vastly reduced paper and ink consumption, which is good for the environment!

We will keep you updated on social media with a release date.

Follow DCM on LinkedIn to keep up-to-date.

Why Use Cloud CAD File Management

by Tammy Mitchell | | à la carte: Baseline Master CAD Plans

Modern engineers, architects and design houses all rely on computers to help create their perfectly formulated and annotated designs. So why is it that once the design is finalized, it often ends up as a cumbersome printout or in email boxes and various places with no iterative indications or associated information? 

Sure, it’d be easier if everything were located in one place, with all the relevant information attached and important decisions indicated and called out, but returning to or seeing a design for the first time is typically an exercise in starting over — both in familiarity and understanding.

However, there’s actually a better way:

Instead of allowing designs to run their course and end up in some sort of digital junk pile on someone’s computer or in some damp basement, why not utilize a cloud CAD file management solution to make the process of locating, understanding and updating designs a piece of cake?

Echo DMS provides these unique features created for drawing management:

Workflow, version control, no folder structures, metadata search, accessibility, access control, no risk, aesthetics, knowledge retention, support, CAD support, Backups, Specialistization and more.

Instead of valuable designs living out their years in some musty basement or residing on random hard drives, cloud CAD file management hosts workable design files online in the cloud, accessible from anywhere at any time — and with comprehensive versioning so that all changes are tracked and traceable back to an original owner. 

For companies that are struggling with managing their growing library of designs, cloud-based drawing management represents a better way, saving time and money for those that need to look at or work on engineering designs day in and day out. 

1. Save Time

When your designs are all in the cloud, with recent revisions and a timeline of important milestones and touchpoints, you’ll spend less time as an organization locating and confirming the integrity of a design. Whether a design was created weeks ago or years ago, anyone with the proper access will be able to quickly locate a drawing and at a glance understand when it was updated or accessed, and what, if anything, has changed. It’s all in the cloud, accessible via your web browser (Chrome is recommended) and you won’t need specialized software or an overpowered workstation to review your assets, which helps optimize efficiency.

2. Save Money

Unlike in-house solutions that can be complicated and expensive, requiring a staff of IT professionals to help you pull it off, cloud CAD file management is both affordable and scalable, so you can use only the resources you need while knowing that additional power and scalability is just a click away. That helps you more efficiently budget for the demands of your designs, and it also means that you won’t need to pay an expensive team to ensure that everything’s working properly and that all assets are available to those that need them.

3. Easy, On-Demand Access

With cloud-based engineering file management, your designs don’t have to be in one place at all. Being in the cloud means that your designs are accessible everywhere to those that need them, as long as the right permissions are defined. Think of it as a secure digital filing cabinet that’s searchable and always on, allowing real-time collaboration and a whole host of information with just a few simple clicks. This isn’t some kludgy file repository with a collection of files and folders, it’s comprehensive and secure storage and backup, all powered by a real engineering platform that enhances team collaboration both in the office and remotely.

4. Comprehensive Reporting and Analytics

Unlike a file or printout that may only be able to tell you when a design was completed, cloud CAD file management comes with reporting tools that can expose everything about a drawing’s lifecycle, including any relevant discussion or sign-off from stakeholders either in-house or elsewhere. Drill down into a whole host of data in ways that you’ve never seen represented before and derive real, actionable insights in minutes with valuable reports and information.

5. Improved IP Protection

We know how it goes. Your department or organization has spent years building up its designs and intellectual property, only to stuff everything in some pointless archive in the corner of a lost room somewhere in the building. That leaves a mountain of designs at risk to water, fire, theft or even misplacement, and if anyone is off-site, they’ll have to make the trek into the office to try and find a design among a mountain of others. With cloud CAD file management, you’ll never be stuck without on-demand access to each of your designs, and even a full network crash or an office fire or flood won’t ever put your valuable IP assets at risk.

6. Better Version Control

While the last big change in engineering file management was driven by on-premises PDM to help with versioning, access and associated drawing metadata, cloud CAD file management takes this one step further with a more secure, reliable and accessible solution that doesn’t need constant monitoring or a cumbersome and lengthy setup by an in-house team. Cloud-based systems are also compatible with more file formats and types of digital interactions than ever, which means you can still use the tools that your organization relies on everyday to collaborate and work with others — while the cloud-based drawing management solution does the rest.

7. Exclusive Document Access

Once your drawings are accessible from anywhere, it’s important to ensure that work isn’t being done simultaneously. After all, if two engineers are making separate changes to the same file, you could end up with two forks of the same design, and a third that lacks any changes at all. With cloud CAD file management, documents are locked and checked out as soon as work begins, so managers, other engineers and anyone else knows who’s making changes — and a design can still be viewed as a read-only version. At the end of each session or day, the document is simply checked back in with any changes highlighted.

8. Assign and Monitor Tasks

When there are a handful of people working on a specific project or design, it can be hard to manage tasks if there’s overlapping work and other dependencies. But with cloud CAD file management, tasks can be assigned out in the order that things need to get done. At certain milestones, notifications can also be sent as gentle reminders that someone needs to take a look, and any and all discussion relevant to a particular design can be archived and attached to a given design or task so that no one’s left in the dark.

Introducing Echo, Your New Engineering Drawing Library

Here at DCM Inc., The Drawing Specialists, want to help you say goodbye to your gross, damp basement and the designs you keep there. Echo is our new cloud CAD file management solution for people, departments and organizations that have too many blueprints and not enough time to keep track of it all. Instead of dumping all of your valuable drawing IP in some hardly used room in the basement, we’ll help you secure and organize your engineering drawings with the best digital CAD file management available — echo DMS.

Unlike other drawing and file management systems, echo is different because it’s not some cookie-cutter, out-of-the-box solution. It’s tailor-made for your business and what you do, and it’s software that helps you keep track of engineering drawings that are coming from all sorts of sources with revisions, supplemental information and metadata to match. Echo puts it all in the cloud, allowing you to quickly search, report on and make changes — all in real-time from any device with an internet connection, even mobile ones.

To learn more about echo and how it can help you regain control over your engineering designs, click here or contact us.

The Beginner’s Guide To Engineering Drawing Management

by Tammy Mitchell | | Drawing Management Strategy Articles

Accurate drawings and designs are a crucial piece of any development project. While designers may be working hard towards a viable prototype, managers and employers know that a codified design is vastly more important. With an accurate design and plan, even one-off prototypes can be easily recreated, which helps save time and money when it comes to developing and testing new products.

But all too often, a one-off prototype is just that — an unreproducible artifact that may present more challenges and questions than answers when the product goes on to production with loose guidelines. In fact, it’s possible to spend a pretty penny reverse engineering how and why something works or doesn’t, which is especially frustrating if you’ve already gone through it during the prototyping stage.

Instead, products that have been designed and well-documented during it are vastly more useful to an organization that excels at spinning up resources and putting them to use. Even a better product can be a significant handicap if the designs aren’t to spec and accurately captured and managed, which can drag down production efficiency and create more wasteful expenditures.

The solution is engineering drawing management.

Engineering drawing management is a sort of engineering file management system. Instead of different designs and protocols that will never magically align themselves on their own, a proper engineering drawing management system captures all your engineering drawings and supporting engineering data in one central place for easy reference and lookup.

It’s the engineering drawings themselves that are most important, as they tell the story of how to consistently reproduce any product or design. That consistent production is essential, and it allows for easy iterative improvements in the design, as well as production efficiency.

But don’t forget the supporting engineering data, which may govern the design constraints and considerations that form the basis of the product’s design goals. Without this important information, proof of conformance is unknown, and both internal stakeholders such as marketing, accounting and production, as well as external factors like customer groups, distributors and regulatory considerations remain unknown. When any one of these pieces can mean the difference between a successful and failed product, it’s crucial to know.

Some think that it’s sufficient to create an engineering drawing or two and to capture engineering data at some point, but it’s not. Your engineering department needs real engineering drawing management, which means proper creation, storage and review of all engineering designs and associated discussion and documents. Even failed ideas can be useful as it shows at least one way that a design won’t work, and that can help inform future designs and decisions.

You need document control for engineering drawings.

Whether you’re looking for a CAD file management system or some kind of digital blueprint management service, a crucial piece of engineering drawing management is control over your assets. From designs to document attributes, review processes and procedures, there’s a lot more that goes into an approved design than the design itself.

There’s the person, department or company that created the design, of course, but what about ownership, or who gave the final sign-off? With engineering drawing management, the answer is just a click away, and it also makes locating an old design a snap if, for example, the original designer has long since left the company.

With convenient titling and design descriptions, legacy designs are just a quick search away, as the iterative process that saw A, B and C give way to D, which stands on the shoulders of what came before. Authors, reviewers and any comments are all kept intact, along with dates, times and who said what. Along with the designs, that’s enough to create a viable company resource out of old designs and information that would otherwise be lost to your company’s growing pile of digital information.

Engineering drawing management also defines a set of procedures for creating and iterating designs, which includes the types of drawing files that are supported, as well as the contents and format of each. With helpful attributes such as the owner and design number, in addition to any revisions, it’s easy to see who is and was responsible at each step of the way. Creation, review and approval are all documented, and the system also governs when designs are released to other interested parties such as accounting, marketing or third-party vendors.

If a design is revised, replaced or canceled, it’s noted, making for easy forensic digging whenever there’s a question about a previous design. Even obsolete drawings can contain some genius or spark an idea in one of your designers, or at least show what has been attempted before, preventing redundant work that may monopolize resources.

With engineering drawing management, you’ll have quick access to a consistent set of drawings and their qualified attributes, which allows you to observe the lifecycle of any design project, past or present. That can help reduce product costs by streamlining design, production, marketing and customer service when all the information is immediately available for reproduction or further use.

Keep all that extra design data.

Beyond the formal engineering documents, engineering drawing management is a complete and comprehensive control system, providing access to miscellaneous information that would be otherwise lost. This includes product capabilities and functional requirements, as well as budgetary constraints, production volume estimates and schedules for each stage of development.

Don’t forget component datasheets from your suppliers and product performance tests, in addition to qualification results, alternative design data and any notes, calculations and other written communications — they’re all important to any design project. Without engineering drawing management, these crucial pieces of information will likely never be seen again, or at least buried in online message boards like Slack or stuck in old mailboxes along with thousands of other cumbersome emails.

It’s only a complete engineering drawing management environment that archives all this useful information as organizational knowledge. By capturing all the information that led to a design, you’re increasing your company’s understanding of how a design came about, including the all-important human aspect of review, sign-off and any relevant discussion that took place.

The best part is that with all this information, you can more effectively run performance analysis, field diagnostics and engage in iterative design improvements over the entire product lifecycle — even with products that have long since been out of production.

Go with the right engineering drawing management solution.

While engineering drawing management can make creating, managing and iterating your digital blueprints easy, the wrong solution won’t be much help at all. If it’s hard to create new design documents and integrate them into your existing processes, your designers might just skip it altogether, or at least waste a bunch of time following awkward protocols.

What you need is a comprehensive engineering drawing management solution that works with you, making the design process both easily understood by various stakeholders as well as a viable tool for your nimble designers. The right system encourages better designs and design processes without grinding your engineers down with a bunch of extra work. Instead, it helps institute useful protocols that help make the designs themselves better and more useful to your organization, and that’s something anyone can appreciate.

How to Declutter Engineering Drawings

by Tammy Mitchell | | Phase 1: Hands-On Drawing Management

A cluttered engineering drawing causes wastes of time and resources, as your computer moves slower and slower, and there is significant chance of corruption. Here are eight ways to declutter an engineering drawing.

Audit and Recover

As these commands are generally used to remove errors from AutoCAD drawings, they can be perfect for a drawing that is overbloated with data.

To perform this function, use the AUDIT command (in the command line). The Command line will now ask you to specify whether you want to fix detected errors or not. Type Y for yes, and press enter to find all detected errors. 

The Recover command can be used when the drawing is corrupt to the point where it can’t be reopened. In this situation, open a blank drawing and type in the command Recover, and a window will open with a list of files to select from. AutoCAD will attempt to reopen the file and remove the errors from it.

DGN Purge

And sometimes a file may seem bloated even though there’s no data. This will become evident when certain functions seem to go slow, like selecting objects, or a slow cursor, or copy and pasting. 

The worst part about this error is that it can spread to other files if parts of the affected file are copied and pasted into it. The underlying cause of this issue is an improper data import of DGN files causing a massive drawing database.

With AutoCAD 2015 or later, type PURGE into the command line, then select “Automatically purge orphaned data”. The problem should then be fixed.

PURGE

These are probably the most common tools used to clean a drawing. Purging a drawing means to clean all unused or redundant entities such as blocks, layers, and line types. To use the Purge command, type PURGE into the command line, and a purge window will open. You can select specific things to purge, or hit Purge All. You may need to hit Purge All more than once to get rid of everything. You will know it’s clean when the Purge All button gets grayed out. 

Overkill

Overkill is another cleanup tool that deletes or merges all overlapping or duplicate entities. To use this, type OVERKILL into the command bar. You will be prompted to select an area, which you can do, or you can select ALL, and your entire drawing will be applied with Overkill. 

Write Block

This method should be used as a last resort because it causes a loss of data from your drawing, including layer assignments. The command transfers all drawing elements to another clean and blank template and leaves all of the unwanted clutter behind. The command for this is WBLOCK.

It will open the write block window, from which you can select Objects, and then select the base point for your selection, after which you expand the selection to encompass all drawing entities in your drawing area. You can also use the Entire button instead of selecting an area, but by selecting the area yourself you are sure you’re not selecting invisible layers outside your drawing area.

In the Destination window, specify a file path and name, and the cleaned drawing will go there.

Cleaning Unreferenced Regapps

The drawing’s performance may start to show signs of slowing and growing beyond its normal size if there are unregistered application IDs. To clean these, type -Purge into the command line. Then select Regapp and the command line will prompt you to select Regapps over and over until all are purged. 

There are other applications of Regapp, and if you’re looking to purge more than one file, the Regapp ID cleanup utility tool is a batch process you can use.

Drawing Purge Add-In

This is a free add-in from the Autodesk app store. This tool can purge almost all redundant data and unused entities in your drawing including unused DGN data.

If a drawing contains an X-ref then it will scan for DGN data in referenced files as well and ask you if you want to clean data from those also.

The tool can be used in bulk to clean many drawings at once. To do this, click on the Batch Purge icon and a batch drawing purge and settings window will appear. You can select which drawings you wish to purge.

Smartpurger

Also available from the Autodesk app store is Smartpurger. In its trial version it can purge a maximum of 10 files, but the full version can do unlimited files.