City of Edinburgh Council

Avanquest Enables Emergency 3G Access to Edinburgh’s Critical Drain Records   . . . and Improves City Council Credit Control Process

The City of Edinburgh Council is responsible for the maintenance of 750,000 buildings within the city centre and the surrounding areas.

In the middle of the nineteenth century the city of Edinburgh was referred to as the “Athens of the North”, noted for its historical buildings, such as

the Central Library and the Bank of Scotland Head Office, both built in a distinctive Grecian architectural style.

Maintaining these prestigious buildings, plus a portfolio of residential, community and commercial properties, as well as providing the community with political leadership and a comprehensive range of services to make the City a cleaner, safer place to live and work, is a high priority for the Council.

The Challenges

There were two challenges – Drains and Claims!

The Council wanted to preserve historic drainage records and make them available online to the public and also streamline the process of reclaiming maintenance revenues from private landlords.

Drains

The Council had a deteriorating catalogue of important drainage records, some dating back as far as 1875. The records show the drainage network and the location of every drain for every property in the city. The records were stored in reference books and files. These documents are requested at least twenty times each day by builders, architects and utility companies, resulting in wear and tear from constant flipping, photocopying and faxing. Council staff responded to requests for records by physically pulling the original documents, which was a time consuming task.

Making these documents available in electronic format would preserve the originals for posterity and save clerical time.

Claims

82% of buildings in the designated area of responsibility are privately owned, but the council has the statutory power to intervene and carry out a compulsory repair on any building that is deteriorating and pass on the repair bill to the owner of that property.

The Property Conservation section is responsible for prioritising repairs and the allocation of work to contractors. Costs are then reclaimed from the property owners.

The Council is recognised as one of the best in the country for allocating work and an online invoicing platform, built in conjunction with the Royal Bank of Scotland, ensures that contractors are paid within 48 hours of completing the works. Chasing the building owners to reclaim the cost of works is an ongoing problem. Slow payment ultimately hits the bottom line.

Additionally, there are over 100,000 microfiche images and 500,000 paper records dating back over 50 years. These paper records filled entire rooms within the council offices. The task of tying jobs and the relevant paperwork to the correct property owners for payment needed to be improved.

The Solution

A joint project was set up between the City of Edinburgh Council and Scottish Water to preserve the historic drain records.

In 2007 the City of Edinburgh Council purchased Open Text Document Server, Alchemy Edition with the Open Text Document Server Web module from Avanquest Solutions. The Document Server is hosted by Avanquest who provide Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for the Council. This meant that the Document Server application could be implemented swiftly without impacting the existing internal IT arrangements. Documents are captured and converted into electronic documents which are stored within the Document Server document management system.

The original plan was to outsource the task of indexing 140,000 images to an offshore indexing service, but problems understanding hand written notes and content meant the task was brought back to Scotland. Over a period of five months records dating from 1875 to 1950 were scanned and indexed by Avanquest partner Capture All. Capture All is a Bureau basedin Falkirk, Scotland. New drainage documents are automatically posted directly to the Council’s web site for Building Standards, making them directly available to the public from any web enabled device. The new online database contains 110,000 individual records.

Phase 2 of the project will see a further 80,000 records placed online covering the period 1950-2000. From the Council web site, users are able to seamlessly navigate directly to the hosted www.cecdoc.co.uk web site and access records on the Document Server. Councillor Gordon Mackenzie, Executive Member for Finance and Resources said:

“These unique records really are vital to the people of Edinburgh and it would have been disastrous to lose them. Meticulous indexing and scanning means that contractors, surveyors, architects and the wider public can access information quickly and with minimum hassle.”

Document Server has proved so successful that the costs of document scanning, indexing and implementing Document Server were recovered as soon as the system went live.

In the Property Conservation section Document Server facilitates the easy matching of property ownership with compulsory maintenance invoices.

The Benefits

Drainage isn’t an issue that immediately springs to mind but anyone who has had a flood or experienced choked drain knows how important it is to get it fixed quickly. This online service will help those with an emergency or planning works to get the information they need.

Royal Incorporation of Architects Scotland Practice Director, Andrew Leslie said: “This resource will cover most of Edinburgh’s residential property and will be invaluable for RIAS members and others looking at adding to, replacing, repairing or maintaining the drainage associated with their project or property.”

Site work no longer has to be halted whilst hard copies of records are requested. This could often take days or even weeks. Now architects and contractors are able to access the drainage site plans within minutes via any web enabled device, such as a smart phone or laptop. This ensures that existing drains are not damaged and new works can be successfully installed in a timely manner.

The Council is also using Document Server to manage documents associated with street naming. Information on pending and completed requests for every street in Edinburgh is available to the public online.

More information

For information on any of our solutions or products, please call us on 01962 835053 or email sales@avanquest.co.uk.