In its original phase they envisioned using DocuVantage and Optix® to protect its architectural archives. The architectural archives contain blueprints of all County-owned property. The County currently has 1,079 rolls of plans, each containing between 4 and 150 pages, averaging 35 pages per roll. In addition there are also 60-70,000 standard size pages of documentation. These blueprints are currently up to 50 years old, and the older ones are beginning to yellow and decay.

Once the Real Estate Department learned that Optix® was being implemented County-wide the project was enlarged to consider solutions throughout the entire department.

The Real Estate Department is composed of three units: Architectural Services, which handles development of County property; the R3M department (Repair, Renovate, Remodel and Maintain), where Optix® champion Tim Donahue is a Project Planner & Estimator; and the Facilities Management Department, which handles maintenance and furnishings for County facilities.

From this reconsideration came three distinct phases, with a possible fourth. In preparation for these phases the county has purchased over $60,000 in system hardware including a large-format scanning station, a full-size plotter, 3 high-speed flatbed scanners and 2 medium size printers. In addition the Department has 3 terabytes of available storage space.

Phase 1 is the Architectural Archives project. Because handling of the 1,079 plans is both meticulous and labor intensive, the County has chosen PRIDE Enterprises to scan the existing inventory of documents. The PRIDE component is due to begin in early January. Once PRIDE has scanned in existing inventory ongoing scanning will be done at the County. There will be 25-30 Real Estate department employees with Optix® on their desktops. DocuVantage will be testing the PRIDE output, making necessary system modifications, as well as providing installation and training services. The goal is to have Phase 1 complete by the end of January.

Phase 2 involves Real Estate Tech Services. Within this group are property managers, land agents and technical staff. They are responsible for buying and selling County land. This department currently has 17 filing cabinets of documentation for existing County owned properties. PRIDE will be used to do archival scanning.

The third phase of the project is for Survey & Mapping files. These include Right-of-Way records, thousands of pages of blueprints, as well as 72,000 aperture cards containing microfiche records.