Most companies have a document management system, SharePoint or another tool, and it rarely needs replacing. What is usually missing is common rules, because documents are produced by the company, the contractors, the manufacturers and the authorities, and will be consulted for thirty years by teams that did not write them. The cost shows up at three moments, which are the review of the contractor's engineering, commissioning, and the due diligence of a sale or a refinancing.
Our view
- 01
Coding is set before the first contract is awarded, so that every contractor delivers with it from the first document.
- 02
Metadata before folders. Folders grow with each contractor, while metadata lets the whole portfolio be filtered on one criterion.
- 03
Each document moves through statuses with an approval recorded at each change, following the ISO 19650 scheme, even on projects that do not follow the standard. The handover package to operations is built during construction.
What we deliver
We work on the tool the company already has. Whether to change it is the company's decision.
- A diagnosis of the current system, covering where the documentation is, how many versions of critical documents are in circulation and how long it takes to find one.
- The document management plan, with coding, statuses, metadata, approval workflows and retention.
- Document requirements for contracts, with their review periods and formats.
- Implementation on the company's tool and training for the team and the contractors.
- Training for the team, and the indicators and meetings the company uses to follow the process, with our support if needed.
Agents and tailored tools
In large portfolios, artificial intelligence agents are particularly useful. They classify what enters the system, detect duplicates and superseded versions, check that the file for each stage gate is complete before the decision and answer the team's questions citing the document and the page. The rules of the archive and their approval remain with the company.
What it connects to
The document management system holds what every process produces and is the source of their evidence. The packs for each gate and each readiness checklist, the file for each handover and the data the agents work with all come from it, and the RACI matrix sets who approves each document. With the archive as the single source, each process takes what it needs from it and the PMO works connected, without documents being redone.