We are in the process of moving into a smaller office. We have records going back to the beginning of time. How far back do you keep records, and what do you keep?
All original plats, and 50 years. Scan the rest, hard drives are cheap.
Probably a good idea to at least keep a copy of the finished product (maps, plats, reports) at a minimum. You would definitely not need to keep all the supporting info (research, etc.)
Record Retention
I've got over 50 years worth of files, plats, maps etc. I just counted 85 file boxes, 75 24X36 flat drawers, 24 filing cabinet drawers + shelves and shelves full of old map copies. I know I'll never look at 90% of it again but sorting through it never gets to the top of my to-do list. That's a lot of scanning, too.
Rule of thumb: Whatever you throw away this week, you will get a call about next week. I wish I had the answer.
EVERYTHING... even if it means getting a mini storage unit and/or taking up garage space!!! As has been pointed out, the minute you get rid of it you'll need it.
Record Retention
I just finished a Project manager seminar and one interesting note about document retention is that the current legal trend is to immediately discard anything except the final products (notes, partial sketches, intermediate product, changed designs, etc). The thought is that if there is ever any trouble, the opposing attorney will trot those in front of a jury and use them for nefarious purposes. The engineer teaching the course said that if he were a surveyor, he would keep the field book, the field notes and the final drawing, that was it.
James Redmon
PS I can't resist saying that it always pays too keep your files tight and "tensioned"
I inherited ten 4-drawer file cabinets worth of engineering files and 2,000 mylars in 1999.
I went through each folder and allowed 1 second per piece of paper to decide whether to throw away or save. It took 6 days to reduce the 10 file cabinets down to 4 file cabinets.
I can't even imagine how many days it would take to scan all of these pages and give them descriptive filenames!
We're 99 years old.
We've scanned and recorded, in a web-accessible database, almost all of our plans.
We've kept all our field books, and will "one day", scan and index those too.
My records are well stressed and don't require retensioning.
🙂
Any jobs that you are unlikely to revisit, keep the finished mapping/reports and anything that you based your conclusions on that are not easily replaceable. In those older jobs, you probably don't need to keep calcs or random notes. If space is really at a premium, chuck anything that you can re-obtain easily from public sources.
Use some discretion, don't just trash files wholesale without first determining the value of what's in them.
Records are part of what we do.
As I told a colleague on the other board several years ago. "A surveyor complaining about all of the plats in his office is like a dairy farmer complaining about cow excrement."
I scan everything and put it on Sharepoint.
An engineer friend says he stores everything
on Carbonite sp ?
I've been on the receiving end of that d@#n attorney who filed a motion to see every document we had in your files within a 5 mile radius of a riparian line we were in court about...
I'm on the side of keeping it simple. Final Map, Field Notes, & DC File.
That d@#n attorney questioned me for several hours about a document I happened to find in the files that had been authored back when I was a freshman in High School by a long since retired surveyor who I never met, who worked for a company whose records my company had acquired before I ever worked there. The fact that I found that document at all was a stinking miracle!
Thanks Tyler, very helpful indeed.;-)