A Walkthrough CheshireOver the last 6 years, Cad-Capture and Cheshire County Council (Cheshire) have developed an excellent working partnership through the successful completion of several projects.In December 1999, Cheshire issued a competitive tender to scan and digitise all of the educational and corporate properties in Cheshire. Cad-Capture was delighted to be awarded the contract in January 2000.The above project was a complete success and ended in December 2000, on time and more importantly, on budget.Soon after the first project was complete, Cheshire continued to use Cad-Capture for a maintenance program and other services.Over a rolling three year period, Cad-Capture’s team of surveyors have performed a “walkthrough” on Cheshire’s properties. A “walkthrough” is where a surveyor takes the existing floor plans of the buildings and compares them to the building itself, ensuring that there has been no changes and that the floor plan and building are in-line with each other. However, if there has been a change, then the surveyor will amend the plans as appropriate. This ensures that Cheshire’s floor plans are up-to-date and of the highest quality. Furthermore, a pilot was undertaken for several high schools whereby Cad-Capture enhanced the drawings taking advantage of the latest release of AutoCAD and adhering to the latest DfES Building Bulletin BB98/BB99 standard; including room colour shading, room suite curriculum analysis and net capacity assessments. As well as the "walkthrough”, Cad-Capture provided a number of its enhancement services. Cheshire’s Property Management Service and Children’s Services department use separate systems to handle the Intelligent CAD Files for different reasons. The ATRIUMproperty System used by Property Management is a property management system is used for building records and maintenance whereas the Tribal Enterprise System used by Children’s Services deals with suitability and sufficiency. Cad-Capture ensures that the same Intelligent CAD Files work accurately and seamlessly with both systems. Cheshire also has the ability to view the most up-to-date version of any of their property drawings via Cad-Capture’s secure internet server and has also incorporated the floor plans into their ‘Property Portal’ application which delivers property related information to all of the authorities Intranet users, including schools.Julie Winstanley, Property Information Manager for Cheshire County Council said: “Over the past six years Cheshire County Council has worked very successfully with Cad-Capture to develop an excellent product which has proved to be an invaluable part of the authority’s corporate property information”. < back
