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Hardcopy Survey Records Retention?
Background: I owned/operated my own small mostly solo shop specializing in Geodetic Control and Aerial Mapping Ground and Airborne Control with a few topos and a few ALTA’s, etc. in the mix pre maybe 2002, but largely geodetic/mapping stuff especially for the last 10-15 years. Since 2015 I have been on staff at an aerial mapping company (only surveyor there, so still pretty much solo, but within a larger organization) and have been on the ownership team of that business also since 2002 (ownership overlapped the time I operated the survey business solo).
Problem: I am running out of storage space for records, so without renting space, it seems the logical thing to do might be to clear out old records? We generally have been doing that with business records at the 7-10 year mark except for large purchases, but for routine business records they get purged.
For the survey records, I have 21 years and starting year 22 of files. I keep these records in my home office and each year move them to my garage. I have all of my electronic records and am thinking since I have those, paper job files may be something to get rid of? I am thinking of purging all paper files older than 10 years and then continue to do that each year. I would keep a few old files for projects that are multi year projects, but honestly even those rarely get looked out once filed in a storage box.
A quick internet search shows the statute of repose to generally be 10 years or less in all 50 states, I am thinking if a problem doesn’t arise in 10 years, those records probably will never be needed for legal purposes and so are just collecting dust in the garage after that…
I know survey records are “sacred” and this goes against all we have been taught, but since very few are boundary work in my case, I just don’t think I need them.
I guess I could scan them all, but honestly I don’t have the time and inclination for that, I think since e-mail, documents, reports and so on are electronically saved along with all the raw data, etc. I should be covered, of course the very oldest files usually have more paper stuff because I didn’t start making PDF’s of reports, etc. until maybe 2000-2002 time frame.
Purge all older than 10 years, or keep? What do you think?
SHG
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