With more and more EPC companies looking into EDMS solutions to manage their data we need to acknowledge that not all EDMS are created equal. An EDMS built specifically for the purpose of managing engineering data and its associated workflows will, by definition, be very different from a generic EDMS which deals with all kinds of information sets. I would even say that (in the highly technical world of engineering documentation management) a generic or non-specialized document workflow management system will end up doing more harm than good.

For one thing, a generic EDMS to manage your technical data will actually involve MORE human effort and manhours.

Why do I say this? Well, consider the effort required to create files and name them, plus all the effort required to manage and update them on a continuous basis throughout the engineering design lifecycle. Consider the stringent quality and safety protocols that are built in at every stage. Consider the dynamic nature of globalized teams and the new hybrid work models. Considering all this, isn’t it logical to conclude that you’re not really gaining anything from digitizing the engineering data unless you digitize the underlying engineering process as well? Otherwise, you’re just replacing one kind of manual labor with another.

Further, if you think of the kind of files used in capital projects you can understand what I mean by ‘specialized data’ and why it needs an equally specialized document management system. From CAD drawings to technical manuals to memos and reports and worksheets and the like (all of which have to be kept up to date or they become worse than useless) the level of effort required to manage everything is no joke! Nor are the consequences of error trivial in any way – an obsolete document can prove disastrous. There are cases of obsolete versions causing injury and even death, not to mention huge damages and losses to the builder. And all because somebody forgot to discard the old version of a key element in the construction and/or replace it with the current drawing.

Another reason a non-specialized EDMS can be a liability is that non-technical information tends to be both static (once created, not touched afterward like an email thread) and linear (changes happen in sequence, one after the other) whereas engineering data is neither. A single review of a drawing can involve multiple back-and-forths and several rounds of revisions involving multiple parties, usually concurrent. So, maintaining an accurate ‘audit trail’ of such documents becomes impossible without an EDMS that takes into account the way engineering teams work in real life and the nature of engineering data itself.

There’s also the question of volume. Engineering documentation in construction projects involves literally thousands of documents that don’t follow a pre-set data model i.e. they are unstructured and spread across multiple teams and sometimes multiple locations. But the same document might be needed in more than one location or team at the same time, like documents required for maintenance and operations. Such documentation tends to be difficult to access due to the many unique file types and formats in use and also they are inter-connected or interlinked i.e. each document can be ‘connected’ to many other documents.

Hence, all these factors make the implementation of an effective EDMS solution challenging despite the huge variety of products on the market.

In part 2 The Importance of a Dedicated Engineering Document Management System I talk about the solution to these issues and how an engineering document management system has to be an engineering workflow management system at its core if it is to be truly effective.