Case Study: Transforming a Council’s Engineering Archive

From filing cabinet to fully searchable SharePoint archive, Vintage Photo Lab can help modernise the parts of your business that other IT upgrades have missed.

A UK council’s civil engineering department had been relying on a physical photo archive stored in traditional Bisley filing cabinets for decades. When they initially approached us their main motivation to digitise was a need to reclaim the space and make it easier for remote workers to access the files. In the end, they discovered that they'd not only saved the square footage but thousands of hours of their employees precious time too.
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Each envelope was indexed by number, and photos often carried handwritten annotations on the reverse. Engineers had to visit the office in person to access images for reference — a process that was both frustratingly time-consuming and inefficient.

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Our process

• High-volume digitisation of approximately 80,000 photographs and envelopes.
• Metadata capture of all index numbers and handwritten notes to ensure every record remained traceable.
• Consistent naming conventions and folder hierarchy reflecting the original filing system.
• Integration into Microsoft SharePoint, giving staff instant access to images, front and back, from anywhere.
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The outcome

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The department now has a digital twin of its original archive, accessible to authorised staff remotely. Engineers can locate, open, and review images without the need to travel — saving time, improving data accuracy, and preserving fragile originals.

Ready to future-proof your organisation’s photo archive? Enquire here about our bespoke business digitisation services.

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