Case Study: PowerHouse™ AutoClassification of University Blueprints & Records

Modernizing facilities records for a world-class research university

Situation

A world-renowned university was preparing to improve and modernize Information Governance policies throughout the entire institution.  Commonly ranked among the top 50 schools in America, the goal was to modernize information and records management to the most difficult of their content assets – blueprints for every building, pipe, roadway and information infrastructure for over 235 acres of a suburban Boston campus.

Challenge

Their Facilities Department needed to modernize a partially scanned collection of over 33,000 architectural drawings, some dating back to the university’s founding nearly 100 years ago.  With a variety of indexing formats, incomplete scans and no metadata or file indexing, nothing was easy to find or locate, particularly on demand to support the ever-present construction and remodelling activities of a thriving university. 

Complicating matters was the evolution of building names, addresses, numbering schema and renovations that occurred intermittently throughout the University’s history.  Without proper indexing, drawings of the same buildings over time were not grouped together to form a cohesive record.

Solution

After running the digital files through PowerHouse to automate as much of the metadata extraction as possible, Valora’s team of highly-trained Professional Service Specialists reviewed the handwritten and faded text from the oldest drawings.  With a complete set of metadata, Valora utilized its PowerHouse Rules Engine to establish strict document naming conventions, based on address, latitude/longitude, building documentation and the use of identifiable keywords.

Results

Upon implementing the new system, University management reported significantly quicker retrieval efforts and a much improved response time for construction inquiries.

Solutions Applied:

AutoClassification

Document Analytics

Electronic File Processing

OCR & Text Extraction

Analytics & Data Mining

Products Used:

PowerHouse