Results Released on Parson & Weidman, P.A. Document Management Project

Wilmington, DE December 16, 2003--Donald K. Lloyd, President of Brandywine CAD Design, Inc. announced today the results of the Parsons & Weidman, P.A. Document Management Project.

Background: In Spring, 2003, 100,000 legal documents were severely damaged in the storage facility of the law firm, Parsons & Weidman, P.A.. A ruptured water pipe caused the damage. The ruptured pipe could have ruined the documents housed in the storage facility; delay legal proceedings; cause client concern; and affect the overall work of Parsons & Weidman, P.A.

The firm immediately telephoned its insurance agent. The insurance agent began to research the best cause of action for such an occurrence. Meanwhile, a new challenge arose: rust and watermarks. Fortunately, the insurance agent received a recommendation from the State of Delaware. The State of Delaware had encountered a similar challenge when, in April 2002, it's Division of Facilities Management building was gutted by fire. Fortunately, many of the documents were salvaged from the debris, but suffered severe water damage. Said Division recommended Brandywine CAD Design, Inc.'s document management division, Bdoc. Cost and feasibility were now concerns.

Results: Bdoc received the call to find solutions in this case, as they had for the State of Delaware. Bdoc first assessed the situation and then conducted a pilot to establish the cost for cleaning, scanning, and indexing the documents. Bdoc proved the documents could be scanned to electronic format, for essentially, the same cost as photocopying. Rust and watermarks, found residing on the still wet documents, were freeze-dried. The documents would then be sent to Bdoc.    

Susan Weidman, from the firm of Parsons & Weidman, P.A. addressed some of the serious issues faced by the firm, "We needed to ensure that an interruption in performance would not occur; and, that our work product would be viable – losing the images and information contained in these documents was not an option. As one can well imagine, cost was also a concern. We didn't want to overburden the firm's budget."

To preserve the information and to allow scanning to begin, the documents were first freeze dried; and then delivered to the Bdoc team. Bdoc went to work on designing and building a special enclosure to contain the potentially contaminated documents and the scanning equipment. The custom design included a filtered exhaust system, which prevented possible contaminants from entering the environment and protected the workers. Operators are able to safely and efficiently scan all documents while remaining outside the enclosure.    

The documents were scanned using technology that was capable of capturing the important data without capturing the damage marks. Finally, the electronic documents were transferred to the client's server. Now, to locate a document, the client enters a search from any PC and the document is automatically located and displayed on the screen in a few seconds.    

The files are now saved electronically and protected by automatic back-ups, which are stored off-site on a daily basis. "We have protected the integrity of our work, our firm, and our clients," Susan Weidman added.
         
Practical Applications
Paper files continue to expand, as space decreases; paper images deteriorate over time. These are two realities of traditional filing that all firms face. However, the firm of Parsons & Weidman, P.A. has found, through converting to a document management system that many scanned images are better than the images in the paper file and files take-up less space because they are in disc format.    

Donald K. Lloyd summarized the results of the project: "[the project was interesting because of the challenge of the water-damaged documents. The problem is not that uncommon. The clients need to know, from reading these results, that if handled promptly, often documents can be salvaged." Brandywine CAD Design, Inc. does recommend, however, the establishment of a Document Management System prior to the occurrence of any damage.




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