Introduce yourself 👋

G’day @groverkent :partying_face:

Welcome @dave (sorry for the delay! I’m on holiday) and @IAmBobbieLee. From sunny the tropical rainy Gold Coast, Queensland.

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How’d you do @MDMooreUK & @jonmeisnerjensen. :safety_vest:

Welcome @Don_F, who must be close to shutting down for the Christmas break?

Thanks. I’m getting ready for the break by working on organizing both my desk and the office, so I guess I fit in here. I’ll write an intro post over the holidays - our office manager and I have been gulping down the forum and the main JD website, but our issues are a little different from the usual.

Ooh interesting. I look forward to it.

You asked for it…

Hi, I’m Don and I’m a partner in an engineering consulting firm in New York. (We work on investigation and repair of structure in existing buildings, if you’re interested.) I started the company in 1992, and reorganized it to the present form in 2006; we’re 10 people and things are going fine, but they could always be better. Our success depends in part on being organized: we start about 250 projects per year and complete the same amount, but not necessarily the same 250. We have records on 5500 projects and there are another 1000 or so buildings that we have not worked on but have significant information on. Our server report says we have over 1,200,000 files totaling not quite 7TB – we switched to Box as our server in 2019, and have scanned in all our old paper records.

I stumbled across the JD system maybe six months ago and was surprised to see that we have accidentally created our own inconsistent and weird version of it. We have two top-level Box folders: Admin and Projects. Admin has a decimal file system in the format F####, so for example F1630 is the drafting-standards portion of our office manual. The Fs need to be cleaned up, as they have evolved gradually and have some repetition and cruft. Every project of ours is designated J####.## where the first four digits are a unique project (one client, one building, one general scope) and the last two digits are phases of the project (schematic design, final design, construction, etc.). The 1000 other-people’s projects are A####.

One of our big issues is knowing what we know. We have repeatedly had the situation come up where someone calls about a new project – say, an apartment reno – in a building where we worked twenty years ago. It’s a big advantage for us if we can refer to our old records as a starting point, but the project names that follow the J numbers are inconsistent so we sometimes miss that we have records about a building. I’m investing some of my time into how to better index and organize our info (As, Fs, and Js) so that we have a better handle on all that info without people having to spend more time looking for what they want. I doubt we’re going to completely re-organize things, but if I can steal some good ideas and incorporate them into our current structure, it’s absolutely worth it. For example, I just reorganized the F9000s – our thousand or so of CAD and document templates – into a JD-like system after an office-wide discussion of how people use that folder.

There are some other, lesser issues, but this is already too long.

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Amazing. I look forward to helping however we can – as always, just let us know what you need.

Thanks. For now, I’ve been reading all your stuff - the workbook, website, forum - and taking notes. If anything jumps out at me, I’ll ask here or maybe confer with our office manager. Otherwise, waiting for the JD business package to see what you come up with. Your process of thinking deeply about this topic is producing amazing results, so I’m happy to wait.

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Welcome @Stiltzquin!

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Welcome @cms :flight_departure:

Please welcome @blueteamtrevor, who is a legend. :trophy:

G’day to @RandomCanuck. Welcome aboard.

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Hey there, Johnny! Thanks for the kind welcome. :blush: Doug Nix from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

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Greetings all! I’m Harry and I work in London as a Building Controls Commissioning Manager. Have had previous experience with the Johnny Decimal system but, for reasons I can’t remember, I decided to change to PARA system a few years ago and have never really resonated with it. Will be venturing into a project management role in the near future and looking to get my personal life and my typical project structure nailed before I undoubtedly become more busy! Currently engaged in the workshop material and thinking of just starting afresh instead of utilising the remains of my last system. Look forward to getting on top of things again!

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