Client
The McGraw-Hill Companies - New York, NY

Problem
McGraw-Hill was planning to consolidate its 1,200 staff in a centralized location in mid-town Manhattan, adopting an open plan office environment with an emphasis on workstations suited to the technological and space needs of the staff. The plan included sufficient space for filing and storage, but the design did not allow for any additional file cabinets. Equipment to be installed in the storage rooms needed to be defined to meet the needs of the departments. A strategy for records purging and relocation, including retention guidelines, was needed.

The Naremco Solution

• Prepared records retention schedules for more than 150 distinct work units.
  
  
• Negotiated retention schedule approvals with each department, as well as with representatives of the Tax and Legal departments.
  
  
• Developed a plan for the records purge with Corporate Facilities and the Relocation Communications Team.
  
  
• Represented the needs of the staff at all Relocation Team meetings.

Client Benefits

• Organized and timely preparation to accommodate a tight move schedule, and minimal downtime during and after the move.
  
  
• Approximately 7,000 cu. ft. of obsolete records were destroyed, and approximately 1,000 cu. ft. of records were sent to inactive storage, translating into a direct savings for space allocated to filing records and significantly reduced moving costs.
  
  
• New procedures for the storage and retrieval of inactive records to assure that:
  
  
  • McGraw-Hill will have sufficient space to maintain its active records on-site and avoid the need to purchase additional file cabinets.
    
  • Records can be retrieved within 24 hours of the receipt of a standard request, and four hours for an emergency request.
    
  • No records can be stored unless a specific retention has been established and approved.
    
  • Records can be retrieved only by authorized personnel from the department that sent them to storage, strengthening the security of and responsibility for records in storage.
    
    
• Enabled the records storage facility to calculate when records should be destroyed according to the approved retention schedules. Established a methodology to prevent unauthorized records from being sent to storage.
  
  
• Increased confidence that needed records will be retained and retrievable.
  
  
• In case of litigation, exposure during discovery proceedings and the cost of responding to subpoenas have been substantially reduced.

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