The internet advantage in facilities management

While documents have been in digital form on company networks for several years, it has been difficult for non-expert users to find and view document files. The software costs for the casual user have been high and the complexity of the programs overwhelming. The information, however, can be critical for prevailing in legal action, for responding to disaster, or simply for use in daily operation. However, documents can be made available to users through corporate Intranets. Paper and film documents can be scanned. CAD drawings can be converted to special Internet CAD formats. Once converted, alignment sheets, contracts, permits, drawings, site plans, reports, photographs, video, etc, can be viewed through a simple browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Expensive, time-consuming, complicated training is not required. In fact, CAD drawings can be displayed without a CAD program. Users can "point and click" on a spot on a system map and find associated data, such as right-of-way agreements for specific tracts. Software can display a virtual base map in a browser where documents are connected to the base map through hypertext:. This way, file names, directories, tract numbers, document numbers, etc. are not required for finding the needed documents online.