MAST Architects sails ahead of the competition

NOTTINGHAM, U.K. - Aug. 6, 2013 - PRLog -- MAST Architects was formed in 2007 and now has 25 members of staff. Based in Glasgow, its main focus is community architecture, in addition to experience in a variety of other sectors including conservation, sustainable design, access auditing, masterplanning, interior design, leisure, office design, healthcare and private work. MAST also retains accreditations in Sustainability and Conservation. With an average employee age of 30, MAST is a young and forward-thinking practice, keen to stay abreast of industry developments.

This forward-thinking attitude extends to information management at the firm. In an attempt to control documents and drawings, MAST implemented a document management system soon after its inception. This system controlled access to documents but did not extend to other areas of concern, as Partner David Denholm explains. “The old system was great for documents but didn’t deal with emails too well. With 100 emails in and out each day, from each employee, there was a lot of information which had to be manually filed. This was an extremely time consuming process  and, along with the drawing issuing process which was taking up to an hour and a half each day, we wanted to streamline processes and free up staff time. The other issue was storage space, as duplicated emails in the file store were rapidly filling up our server.”

At this point, David thought of Union Square. Union Square for AEC Professionals provides a centralised database for all practice data, including contacts, projects, enquiries and organisations, linking it directly to emails, documents and drawings to automatically categorise and file information. David had been aware of the Union Square system for a number of years, and was familiar with the solution on offer. “I knew that Union Square would be able to combat our information management issues,”says David. “The automatic capture of email data will be a big time-saver for us, leading to happier staff who don’t spend their afternoons filing and searching for information. We’ve been ISO9001 accredited for five years and the centralised, version-controlled storage of data in Union Square will assist us in maintaining this. The overall streamlining of procedures will ultimately make us more efficient and keep us ahead of the competition.”

MAST is currently in the process of implementing Union Square for AEC Professionals, and plans to ‘go live’ with the new system on the 16th July 2013.