How to organize or number documents for document control and ease of access

Good day to you all!

I wasn't sure of which category to list my question, so i apologize if this is in the wrong area.


I am a PM for a small construction company, and document control is very important to control the entire life cycle of the project and primarily for billing and my being able to find the document i'm looking for easily at any time.

Here it is:


My document might be : material submittals, shop drawing submittals, RFI(Request for Information),etc

Normally, for my purposes, my copy, which is submitted to Client/Consultant, the numbering/organizing sequence must be purpose specific, like VID-235-RFI-073

VID(contractor name, my company) 235-my designated project number, RFI( the type of form i am submitting) 073- the sequential number of RFI's I’ve submitted to the client/consultant


I had an inexperienced secretary, hired as the project Document Controller, but, for the Master Project Copy, to be kept in the head office, to keep a copy and monitor the project, her numbering system and transmittal number were simply the current date of the submission.

Now, that can't be right at all, seeing, if i had to go through her files, to find a document from the project, there could be no way, i would be able to find it, based on her classification of that date. Right?


What or How would you, as the Document Controller, classify/designate/number/name a file for the Master Project File, so it could be located easily??


I'm not a document controller, but my first thought is, that maybe the soft copy should be labelled on the soft copy such as:


· VID(my company initials first, to designate the original sender/creator of the document

· RFI( to designate which type of a document this is, so at least if you know the type of document you want, this would be the starting page

· 235( the project code number designated by my company, from a sequential order of the numbered projects of that year

· 073( the sequential number of the RFI document

· 02.05.2018 or 02052018( for the date of submission)


Finally, would this numbering classification, be the same numbering system for the Transmittal sheet??



Your advice is highly appreciated. Thank you…. Timothy

 

Your approach sounds like it should work. The main thing is that it works for you. And as you noted, "works" means readily retrievable. Your suggested approach would also ensure that everything is uniquely identified (unless you could have 2 on the date of submission

As to your second question, I don't know enough about the business so I can't comment.

 

Hi Boss,

Actually you need to recruit a document controller besides the secretary.

Never mind. Your approach is fine but please find below my comments:

I propose the following coding:

PROJECT-SENDER-RECEIVER-TYPE-SERIAL
325-VID-CLIENT code-RFI-0001

What you need after that is to create a table of codes

Companies Table
Document Type Table


for the transmittal give the code "DTR" for Document Transmittal

For Letters "LET"
For Memos "MEM"
For Minutes of meeting "MOM"
etc

Note the serial number is continuous as per the document type:

325-VID-CLIENT code-RFI-0001
325-VID-CLIENT code-RFI-0002
325-VID-CLIENT code-RFI-0003

325-VID-CLIENT code-LET-0001
325-VID-CLIENT code-LET-0002
325-VID-CLIENT code-LET-0003

325-VID-CLIENT code-TRN-0001
325-VID-CLIENT code-TRN-0002
325-VID-CLIENT code-TRN-0003

Good luck