Introduction:
Recognizing the huge paper processing and distribution costs associated with the design and construction of naval engineering activities worldwide, LANTDIV, the Atlantic division of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), sought a verifiable, universal file format to achieve an end-to-end electronic process for contract solicitations (EBS - Electronic Bid Solicitations). With more than 1950 Civilian and 140 Military staff, LANTDIV's annual business exceeds $1 billion. It produces documents of various sizes and shapes, all of which must be approved by various individuals during the design process. During the contract advertisement, documents (drawings and specifications) must be distributed to contractors and contract bidders. LANTDIV chose CIC's Electronic Signature product and Adobe Acrobat™ PDF as their ePaper solution.

The Need:
LANTDIV oversees the planning, design and management of construction projects for the U.S. Navy in their area of responsibility (which includes most of the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean). It is responsible for the creation, modification, and dissemination of technical specifications and design documents, as well as engineering drawings, contracts, reports, and more. These documents are produced on a variety of systems, from word processing software to CAD stations. The first challenge was to identify an electronic document format to which all of these files could be converted and that preserved the appearance of the document across systems and even platforms. Since LANTDIV distributes its solicitations to any public contractor, "no cost" solution to viewing and accessing the documents was desired. All design documents must be signed by authorities in the producing area, so LANTDIV also sought a solution for signing electronically over their LAN.

The Solution:
LANTDIV identified the Adobe PDF format as commonly used and flexible enough to handle the necessary variety of documents. LANTDIV selected CIC Signature software to sign and execute the PDF format documents and Adobe Acrobat Exchange and Acrobat Reader to edit and view them, thus facilitating distribution both internally and externally. All bid and RFP documents, regardless of original format, are rendered into Adobe's PDF format. Using Acrobat Exchange, documents are transmitted within LANTDIV, and formatted for final production and delivery in PDF electronic format on a CD ROM. Public recipients of these documents can read them by downloading a free copy of Acrobat Reader from the Adobe Web site or from the EBS CD. CIC Signature software allows all signatures captured to be viewed and printed as part of the Adobe software at no additional cost to the user. NAVFAC, the parent Command of LANTDIV, has announced an EBS policy decision to incorporate electronic signature technology such as CIC's Signature Software through out its facilities.

The Result:
LANTDIV is reducing costs and collapsing time cycles while working with thousands of third party organizations. While results have not yet been quantified, LANTDIV expects to reduce both authorization time and RFP preparation time by as much as half. Internal circulation and distribution costs are reduced, and delivery costs (paid by bidders) have been dropped by almost 95 percent.