Digital archive replaces paperwork at Lloyd's Register

Lloyd's Register has replaced crates of paperwork with a digital documents archive that can be accessed by any of its ship inspectors around the world.

The organisation assesses and certifies ships around the globe to improve quality and increase safety, and works with ship owners and builders to improve the design, construction and operation of ships.

Around 7,500 vessels - 20 per cent of the world's shipping fleet - are registered with Lloyd's.

"As the ship is designed and built we are accruing a lot of information in the form of diagrams, forms and progress reports and that helps us to populate our database - we have the largest technical shipping database in the world - and there's an enormous amount of information that constitutes a file for a ship," explained Lloyd's Register's marine data system manager Richard Neasham.

On top of this the organisation receives 70 to 100 incident reports every day from inspectors around the world.

Previously documents were coming in on paper and then being put onto microfilm: "Not very good if someone somewhere else in the world wants to get hold of it," as Neasham pointed out.

The organisation decided to get someone with "contemporary knowledge", and signed a deal with Xerox Global Services, transferring Lloyd's Register's record centre and staff over to the tech company.

"Over two years we have converted the microfiche or microfilm and hard copy, much of it of poor quality, into electronic images that are very readable," he said.

This task was completed last year and now documents - including giant ship plans - are made available to surveyors, ship owners or other groups that need access to the data via a web portal.

"We used to have crates of paperwork piled up all over the office but now we only see about 10 per cent of the drawings and the rest is to records for scanning," Neasham explained.

Original documents are stored at Lloyd's or off-site depending on how often they are needed, and paper copies of electronic documents can be provided within 24 hours.