Hard copy plans brought onto desktop for Council

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jan 31, 2002

Cheshire County Council Engineering Services has digitised its Development Control and Road Adoption Plans for preservation, ease of access and ease of reading

Cad-Capture has supplied Cheshire County Council Engineering Services with a solution for preserving its Development Control and Road Adoption Plans.

The hard copy plans have been updated by hand and used as a reference for many years.

As a consequence they had deteriorated and in their present condition would present increasing difficulties for effective future use.

In order to preserve the information in the plans, Cheshire decided to have them converted into digital format.

Converting them would also provide improved, controlled, access to the plans via the Engineering Services Network and enable the plans to be integrated with the service's ArcView GIS system.

Bill Keddie, Project Consultant for Cheshire County Council was presented with the task of finding a suitable solution that would meet the Council's requirements.

Keddie contacted Cad-Capture to discuss the project after finding out about the scanning work that Cad-Capture had previously carried out for the County Council's Environment Department.

Cad-Capture was awarded the tender for the conversion of the plans against stiff competition after they were able to demonstrate the required technical expertise and experience and satisfy the councils budgetary requirements.

The plans were in daily use and removing them from site for any length of time was not an option.

In order to minimise disruption, Cad-Capture installed a Colortrac high quality large format colour scanner at the Engineering Services Offices.

A Cad-Capture technician worked at the Cheshire office for the duration of the scanning operation.

Once scanned the resulting colour image files were transferred to Cad-Capture for processing.

Each image was cropped to size and rectified enabling them to be "tiled" for use within the Councils ArcView GIS system.

The completed data was converted to the "MrSid" file format for use within ArcView and returned to the Engineering Services Department in weekly batches on CD-ROM, Road Adoption Plans and Development Control Plans being delivered on separate media.

The decision to convert the Development Control Plans and Road Adoption Plans to electronic format has enabled the Engineering Service to preserve the original documents and provided a platform for improved access and future management of these vital records plans.

Colin Stredder, Principal Engineer (Traffic and Transportation), Engineering Service, Cheshire County Council, says: "Converting the old paper plans to a digital format has meant that they are available to everyone with access to our GIS.

"The digitised maps are easier to read than some of the old well worn paper plans.

"Having them on the 'desktop' has also saved time and effort in getting them out of their storage cabinet every time they need to be viewed".