The Facilities Records department at Virginia Tech manages facilities’ related projects across the 2,600 acre campus. The team wanted sharing and accessing documents made available online, and to significantly reduce printing and copying expenses. Contributing to sustainability mattered to their team too.
Read how VT simplified document sharing with field workers, engineering students, and contractors with Laserfiche WebLink.
Field Workers
Before Laserfiche, field workers went to the main Facilities Plans office to request project blueprints. It took time to locate the documents and make copies. Now, all drawings, blueprints and documents related to the maintenance of every building or facility owned by Virginia Tech are stored in Laserfiche. If a field worker needs to repair something like a water leak, he can quickly view the blueprint on his iPad through Laserfiche WebLink and get to work much faster.
Engineering Students
As part of their coursework, engineering students need access to large scale drawings and plans. Instead of printing and copying these plans, the Facilities Records department uploads them to a specific folder inside of WebLink. The professor specifies the URL, user name and password in the course syllabus. Students can then go to the location and look at the drawings on a smartphone or tablet.
Contractors
Laserfiche WebLink also simplified the bidding process for the procurement of services. Before Laserfiche, bidding projects were advertised online and in a newspaper. Bidders showed up to a pre-bid meeting where they had to peruse 35-40 hard copies of drawings to determine if they were interested in bidding. Now, all of these documents are saved in one folder housed in Laserfiche.
The Laserfiche WebLink URL to the folder along with the user name and password are provided in the bidding information advertisement both online and in the newspaper. Bidders can look at the drawings before coming to a pre-bid meeting. In this way, only those really interested in submitting a request for proposal come to the meeting — saving everyone’s time.
Benefits of Laserfiche
Implementing Laserfiche at the Virginia Tech Facilities Records department resulted in the following benefits:
- Sharing and accessing documents online
- Printing and copying costs reduced
- Saving field workers 1.5 days per project
- Viewing bidding information before attending a pre-bid meeting
