Dear Colleagues
Following a year of discussions and two open meetings, we have finally
been able to get a very positive arrangement for low cost high quality
storage for heritage organisations in a collaborative consortium.
Readers who have been following this will know that we have sought to
establish whether a storage service could be available providing
environment, security, fire protection and building qualities
exemplified in the new BSI PD5454:2012, with a flat-rate low unit cost
per metre regardless of time and quanitity required. Of five we heard
from, two possible suppliers came through with meaningful propositions:
DeepStore Ltd at their Cheshire mine location for boxed books and
records, and DataCare Ltd at Upper Heyford ex-airforce base in
Oxfordhire, for all forms of heritage collection including archives,
library materials, art and museum objects. In addition to the quality
standards, insitutions canvassed (51 expressed an interest) often
requested somewhere that collections could be used or catalogued, and
sought possible add-on services such as digitisation project potential,
scan-and-send services and low cost uplift and retrieval.
To get the single lost cost rate, and no early withdrawal penatlies for
institutions, a thrid party entity needs to be formed that will hold the
main contract with the supplier, for a large total quantity of material
over a long term (c15years). The third party then provides the storage
service to the insitutions individually regardless of their term or
scale. This of course presents the third party with a risk of a
contract (to the supplier) that it can't fulfill, but it does offer
excellent benefits to the insitutional customer. Per cubic metre per
annum prices offered by the 5 suppliers involved in the development work
ranged from over £500/m3, through a nummber of options around
£200-250/m3 to between £60 and £85 /m3.
DeepStore's lowest unit cost offer of £60/m3 (approx £6 per linear
metre) required a minimum 15 year term of 40kms of shelved material,
which came at a cost of about £250,000 p.a. Their uplift costs (removal
and transport from archive to store) were cited at around £1.50 per box.
DataCare offered a single price service at £76/m3 (approx £7.60 per
linear metre) and they are prepared to phase in the commitment to be
made by the third part consortium, starting in the 1st year at £110,000
and gradually building over 5 years to £250,000 for their first filled
storage unit. In addition they offered free uplift (no charge for
removals to store). They also have other regional records storage
locations around the UK, owned by their parent company Restore Plc, such
as in Cornwall, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire Yorkshire, Manchester and south
London, where it may be possible to offer space under the agreement.
NCS has agreed to act as the third party and will set up a stand alone
company for this purpose, providing front-of-house for institions
needing guidance on storage, helping them to make arrangements and then
monitoring quality and environmental standards at the store. We have
started the ball rolling by working with DataCare and directors of
Restore, who will invest £300,000 to fit out the first of these stores.
The quality of this first store will be even higher then previous stores
set up by DataCare and will provide a very low energy use format using
green energy technology - ultimately we aim to make it only renewable
sources as soon as these can be set up at the site. There are over 40
empty shelters at the site, so capacity for growth is excellent, and the
owners of the airforce base and 'town', Dorchester Group Plc are willing
to offer very long term leases to ensure that this will work over time.
For an idea of how the shelters look, see
http://www.linpac.com/en/about-linpac/news/LINPAC--from-Cold-War-to-doc-store/
for an example, from one of the shelving suppliers used by DataCare
(previously called Supporta Datacare). The whole airfield site is
sceruity controlled and we have chosen the additional secure area,
called the Quick Response Area, which as double razor wrie fences around
it and nine discrete shelters within. This whole special area has been
scheduled as a monument by English Heritage.
Archive institutions can express an interest whenever they need to
consider remote storage - 12 of the 51 interested so far are in
discussion with me towards a possible move to the Heyford 'NCS' store -
one museum has moved its collections already into one of the existing
shelters as it needed to decamp promptly. Restore also now owns Harrow
Green, the heritage institution packers and removers (e.g. for the likes
of British Library, British Museum, John Rylands, Bodleian Library etc)
and they will now do uplifts to the Heyford store.
If you need space and want to find out how to join the consortium to
take advantage of this service, let me know. If all goes well we will
report further in due course and set up a service web page.
Chris Woods
________________________________________________
Chris Woods PGDipCons BAhons CertCons RMARA ACR FIIC
Director
National Conservation Service
21 Albemarle Street
Mayfair
London W1S 4BS
tel. 0845 156 2103
mobile 07855796985
www.ncs.org.uk
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