Canadian CAD manager speeds up quality control process of MicroStation files by 78%.

An interview with Jim Lewis, of KMD Mapping.

KEMPTVILLE, ONTARIO, CANADA — Jim Lewis, CAD Manager for Canadian mapping company KMD Mapping Inc., was concerned about the rejection rate of his design team’s MicroStation deliverables. Looking for a solution that would save his team time and KMD money, Mr. Lewis reviewed several products and selected SpecChecker — Axiom’s premier MicroStation quality assurance solution. MicroStation Today interviewed Mr. Lewis about his quality assurance plights and how SpecChecker streamlined his operation.

Jim Lewis of KMD Mapping in Kemptville, Ontario, Canada.

MicroStation Today:Please tell us about the design projects that prompted you to inquire about SpecChecker’s capabilities?
Jim: We work on mapping projects that, due to their scope and the accuracy demanded by our clients, require strict adherence to CAD standards.

Due to the thousands of MicroStation files involved in the projects and the lack of a rigorous CAD standards quality control tool, the efficiency of our design team sometimes suffered as a result of the corrections we had to make when deliverables were sent back by our client. I inquired about SpecChecker because I wanted to reduce the number of deliverable rejections we incurred and the time taken to fix the errors.

MST: How are things now that you have implemented SpecChecker?
Jim: The situation has changed completely. Our design file rejection rate for violations of specifications has decreased from eighty percent to two percent.

Whenever any MicroStation file came back from the client, our drafters would spend an average of about two hours finding and correcting the CAD standard violations. If one figures that we get about 20 files sent back to us by the client, that it took the drafter about two hours to spot and correct the violations, and that there are about two to three submissions in the lifecycle of our design projects, this totaled approximately 120 man-hours spent in corrections — time spent not earning any new revenue!

When there are rejections from the client, our drafters now spend about five minutes on each MicroStation file, because they don’t have to hunt down the errors anymore — SpecChecker takes care of this for them. The cost of doing the same tasks using SpecChecker is a fraction of what it used to be. SpecChecker has already paid for itself.

We also have contractors that do MicroStation work for us. When they submit files to us, we run them through SpecChecker first. SpecChecker usually finds CAD standard violations in their files. But we don’t have to worry about correcting these errors. We simply send back the files with an error report generated by SpecChecker and tell the contractor to fix them.

MST: What will you do with all the extra time on your hands, Jim?
Jim: Ah! There are always new jobs to map.

MST: Excellent. Thank you for your time and best of luck in all your future endeavors.
Jim: Thank you.

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