Regional Power Document Management System Analysis

Regional Power, located in Toronto, has been in the business of developing and operating hydroelectric generating facilities since 1985. The engineering department, managed by Mike Hughes and Jean-Francois Martel, is responsible for not only the engineering design phase but also commercial aspects of all hydroelectric projects owned by Regional Power. They are also responsible for investigating potential locations within Canada for hydroelectric generation, then inviting specific contractors to provide proposals for establishing facilities. The department document control process is directly related to the efficiency and quality of Regional Power’s core operations since documents typically contain extremely important engineering and legal information. Throughout the life span of a project, the documents go through many changes, as shown in Figure 1, and for this reason the coordination of incoming and outgoing documents is crucial. 

Tim Jijong, a co-op student from the University of Waterloo, was asked to investigate Regional Power’s current document management process and develop core requirements for a new, more efficient document control system. This project also requires a preliminary analysis on how to implement a new document control system.