SPEAKERS: Abrachan , Varghese Daniel

Abrachan:

Welcome to Wrench podcast. Hi, I’m Abrachan, I’m a project management domain expert and have 30 plus years of experience in project management, training and consulting, which involves predictive project management as well as agile project management. At present, I work at wrench Academy, the education division of Wrench solutions. In today’s podcast I have the pleasure of talking with Varghese Daniel, technology innovator and CEO of Wrench solutions. Daniel has , for the last 25 years been helping companies in the engineering and construction industries like Mitsubishi, Ceat, CPE,  L&T, AECOM, to name a few to digitize their business processes. And to date rents technology has been deployed on over 10,000 plus projects across 30 countries. Hello, Mr. Daniel, welcome to the wrench Podcast. Today we’ll be discussing about EDMS that is the engineering document management system. Let us start with what is an EDMS.

Varghese Daniel:

So, as you mentioned, it’s an engineering document management, is what people call as  EDMS. But in wrench we call it as engineering deliverable management. Because these drawings documents that you produce for your customer is to be delivered to the customer by a specified date or there is a schedule for delivering those. So wrench not only manages the documents, it also tracks these documents so that you’re able to monitor it to keep your commitment of delivering these documents to your customer on time.

Abrachan:

And who needs an EDMS

Varghese Daniel:

any organization producing any kind of engineering design or documents need an EDMS, because there was a study which said that  if one person creates a document, there will be minimum six persons who will be you’re using this document for various purposes, somebody will be reviewing it, somebody will be approving it, somebody will be viewing it for various purposes. So, an engineering document management system is necessary. So that all these people get only the latest document and every time a document is changed, the history of the document is automatically maintained and a proper revision history is made in the system. And in a document management system, it is also absolutely critical that you also control that once a document is approved, nobody can edit it unless you raise a change request. So one part of it is document management. Second part of it is document control.

Abrachan:

And you have seen on “n” number of projects, you work closely with them. On average, how many documents will be there in projects ?

Varghese Daniel:

So on a minimum scale, you could say,any project will have anywhere close to 500 to 1000 documents. In a large project, this can go to even 10,000 documents and drawings. I am  talking about engineering drawings and documents. Now the interesting part of it is, an average a document gets revised at least two to three times because of changes that are coming in. So if I have 1000 documents, you’re talking about 3000 documents straightaway, and this goes to five to six people. So you can imagine that these 3000 documents have to go back and forth with these five to six people. So that makes it complex and invariably these five to six people may not be sitting in the same office, they are sitting in different locations like there is an owner, there is a contractor, there’s a consultant, there is a site. So, you are collaborating between people across multiple offices sitting in different locations and you are exchanging these documents and that is what is the complexity for which an EDMS is absolutely necessary.

Abrachan:

And this scenario will be magnified during the engineering phase itself, because multiple teams are working concurrently on this documents. So the need to collaborate and manage the changes to the document is much much higher during the engineering phase than the post engineering phase.

Varghese Daniel:

And also what happens is, in an engineering phase is a first, though we say it is a first phase, it’s a phase which is there throughout. Unless a drawing is issued, no work can happen down the line. So it’s critical that the document gets issued on time. Now once it is issued, it is used for procurement, it is used for construction and at that time, there might be requirements for changes and when a change is made, actually based on the design they would have started construction but they landed with a problem that they asked for a change and the change has to be incorporated and this latest document needs to be republished. So throughout the lifecycle of a project an engineering document management is used. And finally, what happens is when the project is closed, you extract all the Aspel documents and that is what is handed over to the asset owner for them for maintenance. So, an EDMS is something which starts from the concept stage of a project till the cradle stage of the project. So at all stages you are required it. And what is your solution with the wrench SP, you have implemented your solutions in more than 10,000 Plus projects across the globe. And in a nutshell, what is your solution ? So, typically what organization do is if they do not have an EDMS  system, they put a shared folder like a Dropbox or a SharePoint, where they create different folders inside that and publish the document so that you don’t really email documents back and forth. So everybody gets a document in a central place, it’s like a central repository. Now the challenge in that is, you decide which is the latest document, you put it into a certain folder. So people who access it from a folder assumes that that is a latest document. And once the document is approved, they will lock that folder so that nobody can add new documents and the document cannot be revised. Now, this putting of these document in these folders is a manual activity. So you can land up putting a document in a wrong folder also. And I can take a wrong document, put it in the right folder. So that is where the challenges of using a central repository, can land up getting the wrong document, because it depends on the person. Whereas if you use an EDMS system like Wrench, you can never ever make a mistake of getting wrong document, you will always see the latest.

Abrachan:

Okay, and how does it work, actually?

Varghese Daniel:

So what happens is, as I said, a document is a living thing, you know, it gets created by somebody. After that it goes for reviews, it goes for interdisciplinary check, it goes to the client. So it is going through a collaboration through a workflow. So in Wrench, what we do is, you can define a document and say which workflow it should go through. So as the document is created automatically goes from one person to the other, depending on the workflow, and that workflow is called the quality procedure for that. So you can define it and ensure that process is followed. Second is, this particular document, when you’re sending it, you don’t actually physically send a document, you only keep one document, they’re only sending the link to it. So you’re not duplicating the document, every time it is going to different people. So if you were to create a document in and then send it by email, you have a copy with you, you send it ,a new copy is now with the with the person to whom you send, he sent it to another person he comments on it, and he puts a comment and sends another document, it creates a third document. So you can imagine, you can have so many documents which are for the same document number. Instead of that you have a single document with a specific number. And you can use that particular document as a link for everybody. So when you comment on a document, you’re overlaying your comment on the same document, so you’re not duplicating the document. So the advantage is every time you look at the latest document, you’ll see the latest document and it’s only one document and when you revise it, it takes a history and that becomes archived and the new document is same. So, that is how the system is designed for us to actually provide everybody the latest, only the latest document only if you have, you know administrative rights, you can see the previous history.

Abrachan:

So basically, you provide a single source of information, so that all the opportunities for error is eliminated?

Varghese Daniel:

correct

Abrachan:

That is great. And why should an owner company implement EDMS ?

Varghese Daniel:

An owner company is the one who actually defines what needs to be done. So they have a document which defines that and then since they are building an infrastructure or project, the design that they  have envisage or they have defined is done by the consultant. Now the owner has to review these documents and approve those documents or use a consultant and review it and approve it before the contractor starts constructing and plus once the final Approved Documents are given to the contractor the contractor gives them shop drawings which also the owner has to comment on. And if the contractor has some difficulty in doing some work because the design is very complex. He goes back to the design architect and say or the Same company and say please change it. So, you can imagine there are so much of documentation moving back and forth in a project as I said you know 1000 documents with three revisions become 3000 documents 10,000 become 30,000 documents over and above that, there is lot of information that is communicated through emails, we call it as correspondences and also RFI’s. These are like documents only thing is these are emails and letters which are written in which you either ask for a question or you get a clarification or you know, and if in a project I have say 5000 documents, you can expect at least 20,000 emails in that. So, all this needs to be managed. So, an owner company needs to essentially set up an EDMS system. So that this whole process of interaction with other stakeholders like the consultants, the contractor, the PMC, and all these people can be done on a platform so that everybody sees a single version of truth and all the communication that has taken place on these documents are available in a central place with a complete history with an audit trail and a central repository is automatically built inside this and ultimately when the project is over, the owner is the one who has to run the asset or operate the asset, they need all this information, in case they need to do some maintenance or they need to do some improvement. So, this information will be available to them rather than they have to ask the contractor at the end of the job to give it to them. So, the first people who have to implement a document management system is the owner because they need the information of the project with them

Abrachan:

okay and why should a contractor use an EDMS system ?

Varghese Daniel:

now, any contractors job is to produce all the drawings and specifications which all needs to be reviewed and approved by the client. And this is essentially created by different disciplines within the contractor. And then after that, they need to issue this for procurement, issued for construction, that ,again, this is the same collaboration part. Now, there is humongous amount of documents now specifically, if it’s a contractor, they need to create shop drawings, which are very large numbers, they need to make materials specifications for procure Method Statements on how things are supposed to be done, you know, they have a huge amount of documents, you cannot manage it manually, you know. So, if you have a document management system or an EDM system, as I said, I would say an engineering deliverable management system, you could make sure that all your documents you will produce on time you have a complete history of the documents with you and all the information is available with an audit trail. So, if a contractor tomorrow is needs to protect himself from litigations or arbitrations, he needs information. So, that is available with him instead of depending on the owner to provide him a system.

Abrachan:

Okay, so, have you come across situations where the owner company is not using an EDMS, but the contractor is using it on their own ?

Varghese Daniel:

it happens that sometimes the contractor the owner insists that the contractor should have a system and then they will ask for a login to get access to the system inside that also happens. But ideally, the owner should have a system and the contractor should have a system too and both should talk to each other. So that whatever process the contractor does, it’s managed through the system and what he gives it to the owner only he needs to give it to them remaining internal aspects are maintained by them, the owner should have the data which is required for the contractor. So what we have done is we have also built something, an application called wrench connect by which, two separate instance of wrench which is of the owner and the contractor can talk to each other so that you don’t have to have a manual communication between the two.

Abrachan:

And what about PMCS ?

Varghese Daniel:

PMCS are very similar to owners, they basically work for the owner to manage a project. So therefore, you know, just like I said, how critical it is for the owner. A PMC also requires all this system to actually have all this data and with the password

Abrachan:

And that must be the case with engineering consulting

Varghese Daniel:

In engineering consultants, it is little more critical because what engineering consultants produces only engineering documents and drawings. Now they have a, i mean, deliverable to the client is that now they have three important things. One is they need to make sure that the drawings are gone to the right process before it is given to the client and they follow the process of review approval etc. So they have a quality procedure. They need to make sure that is followed because If the process is not followed, the output that you produce will not be perfect. Second is, they need to  ensure that all the documentation that they give, they change, they modify, because that is that knowledge, is all available in a central repository. So that they can reuse it. The more you can reuse it, you know, you reduce the extent of additional drawings you need to create, so that they should have a proper system in which all the documents are  maintained. Third is, these deliverables are to be delivered to the customer by a committed date. So for that, they need to track it, they need to monitor it, so that based on the commitment, they know that, okay, I was supposed to deliver 10 of these deliverables, you know, by this date have I delivered it ? am i  progressing the right pace so that I can deliver these documents on time? Same thing, even with a correspondence I receive a correspondence, should I reply within three days, did I do it? How many days are left to reply to it ? all this you can track. So every engineering company requires an EDMS system to have all the documentation to ensure that they follow the process. Second is to capture all the documentation. Third, is to track and monitor their deliverables so that they can deliver on

Abrachan:

so what are the typical implementation steps for EDMS ?

Varghese Daniel:

See, for EDMS system, it’s very simple. All we need to do is, we need to map the processes which a company follows in how they handle documents between the organizations. So you need to have a central repository, I mean, you can set that up, then you can have this documents uploaded automatically it follows a workflow and every time a document is changed, the revisions are maintained. So setting up our EDM s is very simple. All we need to do is set up the workflows and the document types. Now, if you go to an engineering deliverable management system, where you have a master deliverable list, where you identify for a project what are the list of drawings to be produced and by when it has to be produced, then you could also take a step backward and say, by when it should be created, by when it should be reviewed, by when it should be submitted or when it should be approved, you can even go to that level and you can track. So if that happens, then you need to also get a master deliverable list. And for tracking all these projects or documents, you have different dashboards and reports those are also captured inside this. So typically for implementing an EDMS, just a document management system just takes about a week’s time creating those document types, workflows and roles and responsibilities, security etc. You want to go to a deliverable bank takes another week, because you need a deliverable list, you need some reporting and all these are available out of the box you can pick and choose from that and you can roll out the system

Abrachan:

and the right time to think about this EDMS system is the project strategizing phase is it ? am i right ?

Varghese Daniel:

ideally every organization which is in the engineering, handling engineering should have an EDMS. So there is no right time, it should have been yesterday. So if you’re doing, if you’re in the business of executing projects, you should have an EDMS system to make your life easy. And making sure that you’re always working on the latest document. Because ultimately, if you access the wrong document or the wrong revision of a document, and you go ahead and do your job, you land up wasting your time because it was a mistake.

Abrachan:

Somebody wants to get more information about the Wrench solution. Where should they go?

Varghese Daniel:

We have it. We have all of that on our website, you can get all that information there, as well as, You know, we also have a couple of videos in there, which shows you how these documents are managed

Abrachan:

that is wrenchsp.com

Varghese Daniel:

Right ? And just and there is an EDMS portion which explains everything.

Abrachan:

So thank you very much, Mr. Daniel. I’m sure that this will add tremendous value to those who are looking towards implementing an EDMS system. Thank you.

Varghese Daniel:

Thank you