Keeping secrets secret (and staff safe)

Executive Summary

The customer

Our customer is a leading construction and infrastructure business that has worked on major projects across the UK. And if a business within the wider group needs something, it’s probably the site services team that provides it.

The site services team supplies the rest of the group with equipment, chemicals, electric vehicles and EV charging, telephone systems, PPE, as well as the risk assessments and data sheets for everything being supplied. And it also provides archiving support.

But the Compliance Manager felt that archiving support could be improved.

With a strong focus on sustainability, wellbeing and operational excellence, the business felt the archive wasn’t meeting these high standards.

The challenge

The archive was being held on-site. But there were problems.

For starters, the old archive building needed significant renovation to keep it in line with the business’s strict health and safety requirements.

There were also concerns that the building couldn’t properly protect the archive; even minor temperature fluctuations can damage a paper record. And that was a worry, because the archive is the business’s shield.

From HR records to huge contracts, each record is proof the business is doing things right. So those records need to be kept well-preserved, safe and secure, with ready access for only the people who need it.

But the security also wasn’t up to modern standards. Site security was naturally high, but the business wanted even stronger access controls to the archive. Increasing regulatory requirements around data privacy meant better security was needed.

As for the archive itself, there was uncertainty over the contents; gaps in the historical inventory and data capture processes meant it was sometimes difficult to find a record when it was needed.

So the site services team needed new storage facilities that would preserve the archive and keep it secure from unauthorised entry. The business would need easy access, but it also needed to carefully control who had access to what, as well as make it clear who was archiving and requesting records.

So the business turned to Restore Information Management.

The solution

The first step was to determine what was in the archive. This would help identify anything past its retention period, immediately strengthening the business’s regulatory compliance (as well as making sure the business wasn’t paying to store records it didn’t need!).

So we captured all the data about the boxes and their contents so the Compliance Manager could tell us what they wanted us to take to our secure facilities.

“I could have done it or got somebody else to do it, but we’re all busy. We’re all wearing three or four hats. So it saved me a whole lot of time and effort.”

We then securely destroyed the records the business no longer needed, and moved everything else to our local, secure facility.

The next step was to set up the customer’s account to match the business’s security needs. We long ago designed our systems to allow a single customer to have different access levels, so staff in one sublevel can’t access information in another. We can even break down our invoicing by sublevel for full visibility of the account.

This system meant that the business could tightly control who had access to what, as well as controlling who could and could not send items to the archive and request documents back. Even better, there’s a full audit trail of who has requested what and when, giving the business complete visibility, greater regulatory compliance, and better peace of mind.

The results

It’s safe to say that the site services team’s archiving service has dramatically improved.

The original, asbestos-laden building has been safely removed, the space now used for storing container offices that speed up deployment on a construction site.

The archive that was inside the old building now rests in local, secure, and compliant facilities with access controls that keep secrets secret.

Regulatory compliance and health and safety have both significantly improved. The business can easily access documents to prove they’re doing everything right, but who can access those documents is tightly controlled.

And with a superior archiving service, combined with our split invoicing, the site services team has even been able to start charging the rest of the group a management fee rather than a simple admin fee, improving revenue.

The story in numbers

• 11,024 boxes securely stored off-site within a month
• The overall project, including barcoding and re-boxing, took 4 months to complete