Revision control is a critical aspect of document control in engineering projects. With multiple stakeholders, frequent updates, and complex collaboration, maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation is essential. This blog post will explore how revision control within a Document Management System (DMS) ensures smooth project execution and avoid costly errors.

Challenges

While document revision control is essential to managing complex engineering projects, they have their fair share of challenges. These challenges can hinder collaboration, introduce errors, and compromise the integrity of project documentation. Understanding and addressing these challenges is crucial to ensure effective document revision control throughout the project lifecycle.

1. Collaboration and Concurrent Editing
   With multiple team members working on the same document simultaneously, conflicts can arise when merging changes, leading to inconsistencies or data loss. Ensuring smooth collaboration while managing concurrent editing is a challenge.
2. Document Duplication and Fragmentation
   As engineering projects progress, documents may be duplicated or fragmented across different locations, making it difficult to maintain a single source of truth. Tracking and managing these dispersed documents can result in confusion and inefficiencies.
3. Lack of Revision Visibility
   Without a centralised revision control system, it can be challenging to determine the most up-to-date revision of a document. This lack of visibility increases the risk of using outdated information, leading to errors, rework, and delays in project execution.
4. Compliance and Regulatory Requirements
   Engineering projects often involve adherence to industry standards and regulatory guidelines. Maintaining compliance and ensuring that the correct revisions of documents are being used and properly approved can be a complex and time-consuming task.
5. Traceability and Auditability
   Maintaining a clear audit trail of document changes, approvals, and revisions is essential for accountability and traceability. However, tracking the history and chronology of document modifications can be challenging without an efficient document control system.

How can a DMS ensure Revision Control?

Document Management Systems enable organisations to effectively and efficiently control document revision by offering robust features. Assai has developed the system based on the best practices and standards of the Oil and Gas Industry. Assai supports all processes during the asset life cycle.

Assai’s solution has a unique focus on pro-actively controlling the document revision flows and timely interactions among all stakeholders. Let’s delve into some of Assai’s features that support effective document revision control:

Revision control
Assai displays the latest revision by default on top. This feature saves time looking for or working from the wrong revision. Moreover, revision control ensures that every change made to a document is systematically tracked, recorded, and saved as a new revision.

Check-in/Check-out
The functionality prevents conflicting changes when multiple users work on the same document. When a user wants to edit a document, they “check out” the document from the DCMS, essentially locking it for exclusive editing by that user. Once the user is done editing, they “check-in” the document, allowing others to access it for their updates.

Automated distribution
This feature helps distribute document revisions quickly and efficiently. Document controllers can import distribution matrices or lists to enable automated document distribution. Always clarify what actions must be taken, by whom, and when.

Staging area
It acts as a workspace to review and accept documents submitted by external parties without affecting the live or official revision. Once accepted, revisions are visible to all users.

Maintenance projects
Assai supports the controlled transfer of the latest revisions from maintenance projects back to operations, including automatic notifications to other maintenance projects when new revisions become available. Moreover, operations have direct insight into which maintenance projects use which documents.

Conclusion

Like Assai, a Document Management System offers features that address the specific challenges of managing document revisions in complex engineering projects. These features enhance collaboration, ensure document integrity, support regulatory compliance, and enable efficient document control, contributing to the project’s overall success.

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Read more:
An Engineering Essential: Document Management System (DMS)
The 9 Stages of Complex Engineering Projects
Top 6 Misunderstandings About Document Control