DEPARTMENT: Finance
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Troy Elliott
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Wide
SUBJECT:
Large Image Scanning of Plan Sets
SUMMARY:
This ordinance authorizes a contract with Open Text, Inc. to scan and index 270,685 building plan sheets which will be converted to digital files and stored electronically for a total cost of $312,000.00. The City's Information and Technology Services Department will manage the upload of these digital files into FileNet. Funding will be in accordance with the Department's adopted budget approved by City Council.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The Development Services Department received 3,276 commercial building plans in FY2014 and is responsible for managing and permanently storing these plans. The current process for storing plans is to roll them up and store them in banker's boxes in the department until the plans can be scanned and converted to digital files. Accessing plan sets is a manual process and over the last five years the Development Services Department has scanned over 12,500 plans and converted approximately 530,000 pages to digital media.
Texas State Law requires the retention of building plans for the life of the building or 99 years. Development Services was originally storing plan sets in the City's Municipal Records Facility but in 2009 the department was informed that space was limited and the Records Facility was unable to continue to take in additional hard copy plan sets. Development Services explored several options, including renting storage space for plan sets, but this only provided a temporary solution and did not resolve the space limitations. In 2009, Development Services began converting hard copy plans to electronic documents and storing them in File Net. The plan sets can easily be retrieved by employees, with proper access, through a web interface or from any City networked computer which tremendously speeds up the process of finding and referencing large s...
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