The one thing worse than working inefficiently is redoing work that has already been performed.

Over the course of an organisation's existence, especially those with long histories, there will usually be a large backlog of project documents sitting in folders, boxes, shelves and storage rooms. Having realised this, Parsons Brinckerhoff's (PB) Adelaide office set about turning their hard copy reports into digital files. These were placed on an internal Sharepoint site, where users could do the usual text-based searches. But the real power of the document catalogue was realised when a spatial reference was added to each file. Then, using web-server technology, PB now has an intranet mapping site showing the locations of all past projects, with a direct link to the project report.

This has helped PB avoid reinventing the wheel, as previous results can easily be consulted and methodologies be reused. This has resulted in increased internal business efficiency and most importantly, cost savings for clients.