Unlock contractually important emails

Union Square's Workspace software helps Grimshaw to unlock contractually important email trapped in personal inboxes and folders.

Grimshaw, the global building design and construction practice behind both the Eden Project and Zurich Airport, is in the process of implementing email vaulting technology from Union Square Software to help manage and retain a forensic record of all email communication within the practice.

Contractual details and other business-critical communication is now often being agreed and confirmed in email messages, so the growth in legal responsibilities for looking after, and being able to produce, full email audit trails has increased significantly.

Over 25 years, Grimshaw has established a reputation worldwide for rational building design and a profound understanding of the use of materials.

The practice now operates worldwide, with offices in London, New York and Melbourne employing 200 staff.

Grimshaw had previously been relying on Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folders to store project emails, however this was found to be unsatisfactory as a long term storage solution for the volume of emails being received.

Jim Rea, IT consultant at Grimshaw, says, "Our previous processes meant that highly important information such as contract details and customer contact information could be stored in a number of places - either filed into Workspace, sitting in a user's inbox awaiting filing or transferred to an Outlook/Exchange archive folder if the user had not managed to file it in time".

The Email Vault from Union Square enables Grimshaw to store all emails both sent and received so that there is one large-capacity central archive that can be accessed and examined should the need arise.

An individual's email can then be easily retrieved by that individual or by the IT department.

Rea continues, "Whilst we have found Workspace to be an excellent long term storage solution for project emails, MS Exchange Server is not designed as a long term data storage facility.

There is a finite size of 2 Gigabytes, above which a mailbox is prone to corruption, creating a very real danger of data loss.

This creates serious liability issues should a claim ever arise because a key email was never filed or could not be recovered from a corrupted archive folder or mailbox".

"It used to be the case that important business communication took place via paper-based correspondence," Rea comments, "but as the primary method has moved away from Royal Mail to email messaging, the construction industry is having to confront the issue of whether their internal storage and retrieval capabilities are up to the task.

By using Workspace we are creating an incontrovertible audit trail to protect both our staff and clients Rea concludes, "We have found Union Square very easy to work with.

They have a deep understanding of the construction industry and how the technology can be best applied to gain both administrative and operational efficiencies.".

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