How our scanning service improved Cadent Gas' efficiency when locating gas mains

About the client

Cadent Gas is the UK's largest gas distribution network, bringing gas to 11 million homes and businesses.

What they wanted

Cadent Gas' initial requirement was for their archive of historical documentation to be collected and scanned to good quality and stored on a centralised system so that anyone within the organisation can log in and view them.

What we did

We digitised an extensive archive of plans/maps, bound volumes, and standard A4 documents dating back to the late 1800s up to the present day. These documents are securely hosted via FreeDocs - our cloud-based EDMS. We mapped the plans into Cadent's own mapping system directly from FreeDocs, allowing them to select a region on their mapping system and produce any associated scanned plans within FreeDocs.

How did it benefit them?

There is a significant cost and efficiency saving by having instant access to historic plans as opposed to current digital plans. The client can target the exact area for digging to locate the gas mains, avoiding costly exercises of digging multiple locations due to inaccuracies in the newer plans/revisions. 

Colin Sawkins, Assurance and Enabling Specialist, said, "It has given instant access to millions of pages of documents that would otherwise have taken days, if not weeks or months, to find specific information. The time saved carrying out searches in FreeDocs is immeasurable."

We are also integrating links between our GIS system and FreeDocs so that the historical documents will show as a layer in the GIS system, further giving pre-construction information for designers, operational teams, and management should digitised assets not be in the location expected."

What the client said

"The whole team I have interacted with at Storetec have been nothing but helpful, whether it be the team collecting or delivering our documents, the Project Management team or the Accounts team. They are quick to react, and on the occasions I have asked for specific information or different ways of working (linking our GIS system to FreeDocs), they have always been amenable.

My local network was the first to interact with Storetec, but now most of the organisation has used or is using Storetec on the back of our feedback and has a successful working relationship." - Colin Sawkins, Assurance and Enabling Specialist at Cadent Gas.