Our client held a large archive of municipal documents at their headquarters. They were moving to a purpose-built new office, designed with an open planned office in mind, but limited on storage space for large volumes of documents. This made it clear that a new approach to storing their records was needed before the move could take place.
The challenge
Municipal documents often come with long retention periods and strict handling rules. This meant our client’s request had a few specific requirements to meet.
ISO accredited provider: The client’s policy is to work with an ISO accredited supplier, giving them confidence that their records would be handled and stored to a recognised standard.
Tight deadline: With the office move fast approaching, our client needed the archive indexed, secured and transported quickly. The timeline was short, but security still had to come first.
Controlled access by department: The archive held records from several different departments, each with its own security and access levels. Our client needed a way to keep these records separate, so that each employee could only access information relevant to their own department.
Quick retrieval: Once everything was in storage, the client still needed to reach their records at short notice.
Bespoke storage: Some items in the archive were bulky and awkward shapes. These needed careful handling and protection, along with storage that still allowed easy access.
How we helped
Our records management team visited the site and spent time understanding the client’s needs for storage, scanning and accessibility. During this site meeting, we agreed a plan to move forward.
Firstly, the client indexed the boxes and prepared them for collection. We then booked a convenient time to collect them using secure, GPS tracked vans driven by DBS checked staff.
Once the records arrived at our secure facilities, each box was barcoded and referenced on our system, so that data provided by the client could be implemented into our database. We then separated the boxes into departments and assigned access to named contacts for each one, helping the client stay compliant with data protection laws.
Going forward, nominated staff can now make requests through our client portal and receive their items the next day. This cuts out the need to search through an archive manually and frees up time for other valuable work.
We also arranged transport and storage for the large, bulky items that were awkward for the client to store.
The result
Our client’s archive is now stored safely in our secure facilities, with every record indexed on our client portal. This gives them a full audit trail, so they can see exactly where each document is and who has accessed it.
Access to the archive is restricted to named staff for each department. This has improved data security and helped the client stay compliant with data protection regulations, without slowing down day to day work.
Staff can request records through the portal and receive them the next day, so information is never far out of reach. This has cut the time spent searching for physical files and freed up staff to focus on other tasks.
The bulky and irregular items that once caused storage headaches are now kept safely in our warehouse. These can be retrieved easily, without the manual handling risks the client faced before.
The client’s new office was a big driver for the move, but the open plan, partially glass building had no space set aside for document storage. By moving the archive into our secure facilities, there was no need for compromise on the design of their new space.
