• Transport, Maritime
Case RNLI Featured

The solution

RNLI suc­cess­ful­ly trans­formed its lifeboat design and main­te­nance process­es by dig­i­tiz­ing 40,000+ engi­neer­ing draw­ings using GTX tech­nol­o­gy. The shift to raster edit­ing and dig­i­tal archives ensured faster updates, improved accu­ra­cy, and bet­ter oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, direct­ly con­tribut­ing to lifeboat reli­a­bil­i­ty and safety.

Case RNLI thn

Roy­al Nation­al Lifeboat Insti­tu­tion: Future-proof­ing lifeboat design & maintenance

RNLI’s fleet required pre­cise engi­neer­ing updates, but paper-based archives made mod­i­fi­ca­tions slow. Imple­ment­ing GTXRaster­CAD®, RNLI stream­lined draw­ing retrieval, raster edit­ing, and auto­mat­ed vec­tor con­ver­sion, ensur­ing lifeboat schemat­ics are acces­si­ble, accu­rate, and ready for mis­sion-crit­i­cal maintenance.

The Roy­al Nation­al Lifeboat Insti­tu­tion (RNLI) is a char­i­ty-dri­ven res­cue orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides 24⁄7 emer­gency response for search and res­cue mis­sions up to 50 miles (80 km) off the coast of the Unit­ed King­dom and the Repub­lic of Ire­land. With a fleet of over 300 lifeboats and more than 6,000 annu­al launch­es, RNLI saves over 1,000 lives each year.

Man­ag­ing lifeboat design and main­te­nance requires pre­ci­sion and effi­cien­cy, but RNLI strug­gled with lega­cy paper draw­ings — amount­ing to 40,000 tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments. A dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion was need­ed to improve acces­si­bil­i­ty, updates, and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of lifeboat schematics.

Chal­lenge

RNLI’s engi­neer­ing office designs new lifeboats that must meet unique oper­a­tional demands:

  • Com­pact yet durable, capa­ble of han­dling rough seas while reach­ing casualties.
  • Equipped with nav­i­ga­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and sur­vival gear.
  • Self-right­ing in case of cap­siz­ing, ensur­ing crew safety.

With each lifeboat class — includ­ing the Trent and Sev­ern, intro­duced in 1993, came indi­vid­ual mod­i­fi­ca­tions and accu­mu­lat­ed paper-based doc­u­men­ta­tion, mak­ing man­u­al updates inef­fi­cient. Engi­neers need­ed a way to stream­line main­te­nance, track design changes, and inte­grate past records seamlessly.

Solu­tion

RNLI tran­si­tioned to a net­worked dig­i­tal draw­ing sys­tem, inte­grat­ing GTXRaster­CAD® and Auto­CAD® at its Poole, Dorset, headquarters.

  • Wide-for­mat scan­ners dig­i­tized lega­cy schemat­ics from CADDS5/​Formtek archives into TIFF files.
  • GTXRasterCAD®’s Intel­li­gent Object Pick­ing (IOP) allowed engi­neers to edit raster files as if they were vec­tor, elim­i­nat­ing unnec­es­sary conversions.
  • GTXRaster­CAD PLUS® pro­vid­ed auto­mat­ic raster-to-vec­tor con­ver­sion for com­plex files.

Addi­tion­al­ly, RNLI col­lab­o­rat­ed with Adris Ltd, a CAD sys­tems sup­pli­er, to inte­grate GTX tech­nol­o­gy into their work­flow, ensur­ing seam­less design updates and effi­cient draw­ing management.

Result

By dig­i­tiz­ing and inte­grat­ing raster edit­ing tools, RNLI:

  • Mod­ern­ized its lifeboat doc­u­men­ta­tion, mak­ing updates faster and more cost-effective.
  • Elim­i­nat­ed man­u­al draft­ing inef­fi­cien­cies, ensur­ing pre­ci­sion in lifeboat modifications.
  • Inte­grat­ed GTX into SAP sys­tems, improv­ing data acces­si­bil­i­ty and enhanc­ing long-term res­cue mis­sion support.

“GTXRaster CAD® pro­vides a very com­pre­hen­sive and user-friend­ly envi­ron­ment for main­tain­ing, edit­ing, and updat­ing our draw­ings — whether scanned or part of our lega­cy archive.”
- David Wil­son, RNLI CAD Manager