Huge volumes. Little time. High stakes.

That was the challenge RM Assessment needed us to tackle. Because it offered e-marking for so many examining bodies internationally, RM Assessment needed millions of A4 sheets scanned every year.

And with the majority of exams sat between March and July, around 96% of those A4 sheets needed scanning in an 8-week period.

Any delays in getting those sheets to examiners could prevent hundreds of thousands of students getting their results on time, potentially delaying university or college applications.

Huge volumes. Little time. High stakes.

Once the papers had been digitised, they would need to be both stored and ultimately destroyed in a way that maintains rock-solid information security and meets rigorous privacy regulations. each examining body had different processes, different data capture requirements, and different SLAs. Over 18,000, in fact!

So RM Assessment needed us to handle the volumes, the timeframes, and the stakes, while also offering secure storage and destruction and all the while remaining flexible.

When it came to figuring out how we were going to support RM Assessment, we weren’t much fazed by the volume. After all, we already have a number of scanning facilities run by experienced staff and equipped with incredible high-speed scanners that can process up to 75 images every second.

The real challenge was in the short time-frames. We realised we would need to source extra facilities in order to both support RM Assessment and still look after our existing customers.

So that’s just what we did.

Growing new facilities

We decided to split the work between existing facilities in England and Scotland, as well as sourcing new facilities in the USA and, as the project evolved, Ireland. Each of these facilities managed to the same high standards, from ISO 27001 for information security to BS10008 for admissible digitisation of the exam papers.

We then hired over 600 new staff, who undergo rigorous training each year before the peak exam period begins. These staff are supported by our experienced team leaders and senior staff, who move between the sites to direct and oversee the entire operation.

All together, this meant dozens of scanners were each processing up to 75 images every second, up to 24 hours a day, across four facilities in four countries and two time zones. All powered by plenty of tea!

How to deliver on a promise

Results day is a long-awaited moment for students: it’s the day they find out if their next chapter begins the way they hoped. So we’ve designed and refined our processes to help those results come in on time.

• Arrival: Exam booklets arrive by courier, Royal Mail, or direct from RM Assessment’s customers. Each delivery is barcoded for tracking and labelled with a target completion date.
• Preparation: Pages are separated from the spines by industrial guillotine. The spine is retained, and the pages are collated for scanning.
• Scanning: High-speed scanners process up to 75 images every second. Quality control prevents folds, out-of-sequence pages, or double feeds that could impact marking.
• Data capture: We’ve designed custom software to securely capture key information such as candidate numbers, dates, component level numbers. Not to mention the students’ answers of course!
• Delivery: Daily uploads deliver the data direct to RM Assessment’s e-marking platform, ready for examiners.
• Storage: Both spines and original papers move straight into our secure on-site storage facilities. Once RM Assessment confirms the original papers are no longer needed, we securely destroy them.

It’s a carefully designed secure process that delivers millions of papers to examiners all over the world.

We’ve been working with RM Assessment since 2009, and the partnership has grown stronger with every year.

RM Assessment’s e-marking service has gone from strength to strength. We’re proud to have supported that growth and we’re working hard to develop new ways to help RM Assessment deliver even more for its customers.

We’re proud of the way our team created a solution to RM Assessment’s unique workloads. But, perhaps more importantly, we estimate that we’ve helped deliver exam results for millions of students waiting to start their next chapter. And helping to put those results in their hands gives us the warm fuzzy feeling you need to get through the long shifts during exam season!

• 110 million pages scanned each year
• 103 million images scanned in just 8 weeks
• 18,000+ individual SLAs
• 4 facilities in 4 countries across 2 time zones
• 600+ staff hired
• Millions of students getting the exam results on time