Below is a rough guide to the typical costs for sds Property to design and build a bespoke data storage and retrieval, and document management system:

storage/retrieval type	cost (range)
CD-ROM/DVD	£0
Network	£0 - £6,000
Internet/Intranet Solution	£3,000 - £12,000
Living Solution (with full document management module and workflow)	£8,000 - £34,000
Annual web-hosting (only for internet and living solutions)	£800 - £8,000

The annual charge for our internet option is only applicable if sds Property servers are used. If the client uses his or her own server or an in-house server, there is no annual charge, and no individual license charges. In addition the cost includes access to a dedicated project management team, quality control, and full product testing.
As a general guide, A4 sized documentation can be scanned in black and white for as little as six pence per page. Colour photos can be as low as 45 pence per page, and large format plans (A1 in size), priced at around 80p each.The prices quoted are to:

A typical archive will contain properties (many of which are Freehold) with lots of large format plans) and documents dating back to the 1900s and earlier. In many cases, each property will have more than one deed packet (in some cases as many as 20). There could be as many as 1,000 different property documents for one property, covering 250 different property types (for example, tree preservation order, coal mining reports, wayleaves, leases for land/property which has been sub-let on the main property, and so on). A typical archive will contain properties (most of which are leasehold and with lots of large format plans) and documents going back 30 years. There may be some A0 colour documents in the deed packet, up to a maximum of five. The average lease/land charge certificate will have A4 and A3 colour plans. In most cases, each property will have one or two deed packets per property address, although in some cases as many as ten. There could be as many as 150 different property documents for one property covering 150 different property types (leases, licenses, planning documents, rent review memoranda, and so on). A typical archive will contain properties (most of which are leasehold) and documents dated 30 years or more. Only the principal documents will be scanned (maximum of eight), for example: lease, license, rent review memorandum, and so on.
A typical archive will contain the working daily correspondence for an operation retail unit or property. Over a six year period as many as 300 documents could be collected, including e-mails, memos, letters, fax, memorandum, SODs (schedule of dilapidations), plans, photographs, estimates, investment and settlement files. A typical archive will contain the original fit-out and developer operational and maintenance files for properties. As well as this, there may be additional large format plans, archives of Microfiche and aperture cards. For each building, there may be an asset register and a number of certificates (for example, fire, boiler, lift, riddor, electrical) for each building, which can be set to prompt you when they are due for renewal.

Over a building's life-cycle as many as 200 physical folders could be collected, including the H&S files and log, the CDM files, collections of photographs, inspection documents and service contracts with suppliers to the building. For this kind of archive, we produce a "living tree" which mirrors the hierarchical structure of a typical CDM file, so that any engineer or surveyor can go straight to the web site archive and extract the element he requires). As well as its linear index which mirrors the physical folder, our system also has a full text search facility with various filtering options.

It is possible that you will require us to develop an entire bespoke property management system which you can then use to store all the information about your properties, including: The above system will be entirely tailor-made for your property department. It will do exactly what you require, and will become a natural extension to your daily routine.

If a bespoke system is not required, sds Property's products can be made to work with Trace Solutions' off-the-shelf software databased products. We share a number of clients with Trace Solutions and often collaborate with them to get the most suitable product for a customer.

sample costs #1

manweb – scottish power Scanned, processed and entered into a sophisticated search and retrieval system (with client intranet access), 100,000 wayleaves, each containing at least one A4 colour map and two A4 B&W pages of text. Total cost: £195,000 * less than £2 per legal document

sample costs #2

a uk household name retail company Scanned, processed and entered into a database (with sophisticated search and retrieval tools) 320 properties, meaning 320 property deed packets, including the following physical file types): Completed lease and rent review memoranda Lease variations and other legal documents Valuations reports (enabling rapid access to valuation data for updating) Licences for alterations and concession agreements Store planning consents and variations Other planning agreements (compound, signage) and building control files Plans – merchandise, laser survey, site layout, demise plan Total Cost: £38,000