• Utilities, Telecom
Case BT area Featured

The solution

BT rev­o­lu­tion­ized its draw­ing man­age­ment sys­tem, achiev­ing stan­dard­ized for­mats, reduced retrieval times, effi­cient net­work per­for­mance, and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance. GTX solu­tions helped BT stream­line work­flows, cut costs, and improve acces­si­bil­i­ty, ensur­ing long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty for its infra­struc­ture documentation.

Case BT Featured

British Tele­com: Achiev­ing Five-Sec­ond Draw­ing Retrieval Across 50 Locations

BT strug­gled with for­mat incon­sis­ten­cies, slow access, and inef­fi­cient doc­u­ment man­age­ment for 85,000+ draw­ings across 50 sites. With GTXRaster­CAD® PLUS, BT cen­tral­ized its archive, reduced net­work load with raster thumb­nail pre­views, and ensured ISO14001 com­pli­ance, cut­ting retrieval time to five sec­onds and improv­ing ser­vice efficiency.

As one of the UK’s largest com­pa­nies, BT man­ages a vast prop­er­ty port­fo­lio with 8,500 build­ings, includ­ing 5,000 tele­phone exchanges, offices, work­shops, and lab­o­ra­to­ries. To stay com­pet­i­tive, BT sought a stream­lined approach to man­ag­ing 85,000+ tech­ni­cal draw­ings relat­ed to its infra­struc­ture. A high-speed, scal­able draw­ing man­age­ment sys­tem was required to improve effi­cien­cy, retrieval times, and net­work performance.

Chal­lenge

BT faced three major hur­dles in opti­miz­ing its engi­neer­ing drawings:

  • Mul­ti­ple CAD for­mats: Draw­ings were cre­at­ed using Auto­CAD®, CADAM®, Inter­graph®, and Micro­sta­tion®, lead­ing to com­pat­i­bil­i­ty issues and inefficiencies.
  • Slow retrieval & net­work load: Access­ing files across 50 loca­tions required con­sid­er­able data trans­fer, caus­ing net­work delays.
  • Envi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance & accu­ra­cy: BT need­ed ISO14001-cer­ti­fied doc­u­men­ta­tion to track drainage routes and envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment across its sites.

A com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion was need­ed to stan­dard­ize work­flows, accel­er­ate access times, and min­i­mize net­work strain while ensur­ing com­pli­ance with inter­na­tion­al standards.

Solu­tion

BT imple­ment­ed a cen­tral­ized draw­ing archive sys­tem, sup­port­ed by GTXRaster­CAD® and GTXRaster CAD PLUS licens­es inte­grat­ed with Auto­CAD®. Key ele­ments included:

  • Hybrid Raster & Vec­tor Edit­ing: GTXRaster­CAD® enabled engi­neers to edit scanned draw­ings with­out full vec­tor con­ver­sion, speed­ing up the workflow.
  • Opti­mized Net­work Usage: GTX soft­ware gen­er­at­ed raster thumb­nail pre­views (TIF files), allow­ing five-sec­ond retrieval times across loca­tions while min­i­miz­ing file trans­fers over BT’s mul­ti-pro­to­col rout­ed net­work (MPRN).
  • Envi­ron­men­tal Data Track­ing: GTXRaster­CAD PLUS® helped BT main­tain ISO14001 com­pli­ance, enabling engi­neers to add drainage path­ways and dis­charge routes direct­ly to scanned site plans.

Result

BT’s new sys­tem achieved five-sec­ond retrieval times, with 85,000 draw­ings online and 2,000 to 3,000 new draw­ings dig­i­tized each month.

  • Engi­neers at 50 loca­tions can view, red-line, edit, and print draw­ings seamlessly.
  • Reduced net­work con­ges­tion led to faster access speeds, improv­ing collaboration.
  • The dig­i­tal archive sup­ports long-term data secu­ri­ty, allow­ing for future web-based access for field engineers.

“Apart from giv­ing us enor­mous flex­i­bil­i­ty in how we work with our scanned draw­ing files, the GTX prod­ucts have been essen­tial to the suc­cess.”
- Paul Bag­nall, BT CAD Sys­tems Manager