10East's Document Management and Logistics group manages the in-process and in-service fixed infrastructure plans for one of North America's largest Class I railroads. Millions of drawings are required to represent that infrastructure and, since 1998, 10East has housed the paper versions at our Document Management and Logistics facility in Jacksonville, Florida, and the electronic (CAD/scanned) versions in RailDOCS's Plan Management Program.
The RailDOCS Plan Management Program (PMP), like all RailDOCS software, is custom designed to meet the unique challenges of plan storage, retrieval, reproduction, check-outs, check-ins, etc. for railroad fixed infrastructures. Today's railroads have many vendors that need access to modify or view in-process plans, and reference in-service plans. Providing that access is critical, but it must be controlled and managed well, to protect railroad interests. Railroads have many employees and partners that need "quick glances" at plans from time to time, where speed, and avoiding reproduction and shipping costs, all have value. Railroads have hundreds of maintenance workers that can benefit greatly from real-time access to plans, and with an ever-growing percentage of the plant being represented by electronic drawings, making that a reality is more practical than ever. RailDOCS PMP addresses all of these issues, and in several unique ways.
Most importantly, RailDOCS PMP intimately understands railroad terminology and processes. RailDOCS PMP is not an off-the-shelf document management system that customers must try to shoehorn "railroading" into. RailDOCS PMP understands railroad mileposts, and the concepts of locations and drawings. Locations in PMP define all of the affected milepost ranges, the location type (e.g. Crossing Start, Cut Section, Drawbridge, Intermediate Signal), Federal DOT#s or RailDOCS PMMS asset ID numbers, and more. Tracing records also store the list of affected mileposts, the drawing and sheet numbers, vector and/or raster files (if applicable), where paper versions are stored (cabinet and drawer numbers, if applicable), any special drawing-type flags (e.g. Aspect Chart, Track Profile), and a location the drawing is associated with, if applicable.
PMP understands railroading, so it can answer queries like, "show me all of the locations that fall within the milepost ranges in this track profile drawing" or, when viewing a given location, PMP will show users "these other locations and/or tracings, though not directly associated with this location, do impede upon its mileposts in some way." These are hugely important features that can save railroaders significant time and money, and typical off-the-shelf document management systems just cannot provide them.
RailDOCS PMP provides real-time and on-demand conversions of Microstation, AutoCAD, and scanned drawings to PDF, allowing authorized users to quickly get an exact copy of a plan, with no need for separate CAD software for viewing, plotting, or printing. PMP's CAD-to-PDF functionality is a big win for office and field workers alike, and is especially beneficial for use in trouble shooting assistance and disaster recovery.
RailDOCS PMP is tightly integrated with other RailDOCS systems, including RailDOCS T&I, RailDOCS CMS, and RailDOCS Project Management. That tight integration means that plans are just "one click away" for users working in other RailDOCS systems. For example, a manager looking at the last year of testing history at a grade crossing is "one click away" from signal drawings for that crossing. An engineer looking at the detailed configuration of a vital logic controller at an interlocker is "one click away" from the related engineering drawings.
