tieBridge implemented DC Water's EDMS

OVERVIEW

District Of Columbia Water And Sewer Authority (DC Water) is a regional utility that provides drinking water, wastewater collection and wastewater treatment to more then 500,000 residential, commercial and governmental customers in the District of Columbia.  In addition to its own jurisdiction, it also collects and treats wastewater for 1.6 million customers in its neighboring jurisdictions of Maryland and Virginia.

Covering close to 300 acres, the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant is a constantly evolving Engineering marvel with several Engineering projects and upgrades at various development stages, taking place concurrently on multiple treatment processes, encompassing thousands of pieces of equipment at any given time, all while keeping the plant fully operational.

The original facility was built in the 1930's, and over time has been expanded and upgraded into the largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world.  As part of the original plant construction, major upgrades and ongoing improvements, several million pages of Engineering records have been created and stored.  These records exist in various ages and formats, ranging from regular and oversize paper records, photos, videos and other hard copy storage media, to electronic files including standard MS Office and Adobe Acrobat files, with records dating from the 1930's through the present day. In recent years, the document capture and storage requirements have become more complex with the addition of electronic Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) drawings. Historically, all final records have been warehoused in hardcopy format in a central records facility, utilizing thousands of cubic feet of valuable storage space, and creating huge challenges in document integrity, search, and retrieval, thus creating unwieldy inefficiencies and additional expenses to the authority.

The challenges of capturing, storing, and making Engineering records easily available to DC Water stakeholders at any point in time, in an on-demand, ongoing basis, as well as capturing changes to the records as multiple in process changes to the Plant occur, and cleaning up the existing backlog inventory of records posed huge technical, operational, and logistical challenges to the authority.

Based on a proven ability to deliver time and again, tieBridge Inc. was selected and tasked to lead, coordinate, and implement an enterprise wide process and technical solution to address these challenges in a timely and cost effective manner. tieBridge Inc., in coordination with various DC Water Departments, and external vendors, succeeded in addressing these challenges and led the design, development, and implementation of a multi-million dollar program to create and deploy an Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS) and an associated Engineering Management of Change (MOC) process that is intuitive, robust, scalable and effective, utilizing tieBridge's Project Management and technical capabilities, and Open Text Corporation's industry leading Enterprise Document Management solutions.

BUSINESS DRIVERS

DC Water approached tieBridge with a complex set of functional and technical program requirements ranging from record cleanup, indexing, and digitization, to creation of the Engineering MOC and a record retention policy, and implementation of the program to approximately 500 members of the Engineering, Wastewater Treatment and Maintenance departments. The key indicators of the success of this system consisted of its abilities to:

1. Digitize and store archival capital construction project and operational records, making records easily available to stakeholders, and thus improving customer satisfaction.
2. Develop and implement an efficient and effective document storage taxonomy based on the major treatment processes, and adhering to the Records Management program guidelines.
3. Provide immediate, simple and advanced unified search capabilities allowing stakeholders easily and rapidly retrieve the correct records with minimal training.
4. Standardize work management processes through the development and deployment of an integrated Engineering MOC that approves and captures the right records from the right stakeholders, at the right time, in conjunction with changes to the Plant. Additionally add new records and replace superseded records with the correct record copy, thus dramatically improving record accuracy and availability.
5. Captures and presents records in their native format from a single integrated web enabled graphical user interface that is simple and intuitive to all levels of users.) Reclaim scarce storage space housing the paper records.

Prior to implementation of EDMS and MOC, several record management and process issues were prevalent.  Some examples of the challenges included:Incomplete, disparate Engineering datasets and data assets, with limited record accuracy.

1. Records had multiple versions, many of which missing or incomplete copies, with no clear delineation between various versions.
2. Inconsistent record capture and update processes. Records were not accurately captured and updated as changes were implemented on the Plant, leading to a lack of confidence in the reliability and completeness of the records.
3. Difficult and time-consuming manual record search and retrieval. Stakeholders would need to place a request with the Engineering Librarian during set office hours on weekdays who would then complete a search on a first come basis, and hand off available matching records. This proved challenging when records were needed during off-hours on a 24x7x365 operational facility.
4. The records library was encountering physical space constraints.

APPROACH

The tieBridge team approached the challenges with a three-prong concurrent action plan:

• Formation of a multidisciplinary working group to develop and implement standardized Document Management, Record Management and Management of Change policies, procedures, and trainings for stakeholders.
• Priority based record inventory, cleanup, organization, and digitization.
• Development of an RFI, RFP, and ultimate selection and implementation of an Enterprise Document Management System.

RESULTS

The MOC and EDMS were piloted in Q4/2008 and went into full production in Q1/2009, on schedule and within budget.

This is a multi-year project given the scope and volume of records. Progress continues on a priority basis and will extend into 2010 and beyond.  Initial results and feedback have been very positive from all levels of the organization, including a push to continue to fast track deployment of the solution to all Engineering stakeholders.

Enterprise wide deployment of the EDMS has begun in parallel to several other functional departments within the authority, along with several fully deployed department wide implementations in Production.

CONCLUSION

The successful implementation of the Engineering EDMS and MOC at DC Water highlights the importance of document and records management and the significant benefits that it brings.  These benefits are measurable both in terms of return on investment and dramatic improvements in employee efficiency and effectiveness, and quality of service.  In the case of DC Water, this translates to considerable cost savings. By working with the various stakeholders and adopting an approach that incorporates both return on investment and quality of service, tieBridge is able to bridge multiple diverse internal and external stakeholders and select, source, build, and deploy scalable, value add solutions that exceed client expectations.