Who are the Drawing Specialists? 

DCM Inc., established in 2004, is the leading drawing management company for facility managers. DCM is the ultimate solution to preserve and modernize facilities’ most valuable assets: engineering drawings (blueprints).

We have been named ‘The Drawing Specialists’ by our clients. For our great hands-on approach that begins in their back room. Whether they require hands-on dirty work to get the mess organized, digitized, converted to AutoCAD, create an optimized Master CAD floor plan, or an online drawing management software that helps them keep track of everything successfully. We are the company they can trust to handle everything they throw our way. We are a one-stop solution for their drawing management needs.

DCM Inc. The Founder

Darrell Mitchell Sr., a Servant Leader, wears his heart right out front and centre while leading and empowering his people. His leadership and management strengths come from a deep desire to serve and truly listen and support his people.

An accurate display of this strength is when he chooses to retire from his Executive Management career after 25 years. A high percentage of his people were ready to pack their bags and join him on whatever journey they may bring. However, Darrell encouraged his people to stay as he needed a well-earned rest. He had been in the engineering industry for over 30 years and had worked hard building the company from 50 to 500+ employees.

Darrell took this time to reset and re-calibrate his focus and desire to serve in other unrelated industries. However, over time his experience and passion for engineering brought him back to the industry. This time Darrell and his greatest supporter Cindy, his wife of 35 years, acquired a paper to CAD conversion service business and started Drawing Conversion Management, DCM Inc.

DCM Inc. The Beginning

The Paper to CAD conversion service that we later named redraw supports engineers, architects, designers and facility planners to draw preparations for new designs or renovations. Our back-office support team is preparing any source format of drawings into fully layered and editable AutoCAD drawings, allowing our redraw clients to focus on the design work they are schooled to do versus redrawing other people’s work.

However, with Darrell’s serving nature at heart and listening and asking the right questions, he noticed that our Redraw clients and their clients had a similar problem. When it came to finding the correct drawing for a given project was very inefficient. The situation was the same everywhere they went. Where? Who has? Is this the correct version? It will take us days to filter through this mess to find the required drawings to begin this project.

With his engineering background, he understood the life cycle of a drawing and understood that without proper drawing management how fast this can become a serious mess.

He gathered his people (like a great leader would) and worked to design a hands-on solution that would solve our redraw clients and their clients’ drawing management situation.

Hands-On Was Born = Phase 1

Audit: First, we developed audit procedures to organize the situation. They were sorting through the mess, whether that was digital or hard copy drawings. Understanding the life cycle of a drawing provided clarity to us on what to do. Many people using these drawings at this stage of their life cycle did not understand them, making it challenging to maintain their organization level. On average, 70% of the stored drawings were not relevant; they are superseded versions and duplicates! This one-stage brings much clarity to their situation.

File Processing: 70% of the drawings are not relevant; This leaves us with a much more manageable number to get every drawing optimized into a multi-use format like PDF. We developed processes to clean up and optimize any quality, paper, or digital source to an optimized PDF.

Indexing: We had to make them retrievable, so we developed an indexing process (Data collection) to extract 18 points of data helpful in finding what you need to maintain the facility.

DCM Inc. SaaS Started in 2004 = Phase 2

Now that we had the situation organized and retrievable, we asked how you keep it organized?

We knew that drawings were not static and that consistent revisions, renovations and additions are always in the works. Therefore, managing version control and handling new project drawings at a high frequency must keep their newly optimized situation up-to-date. Solution; develop software to host the database and digital files to make the retrieval and sharing even better. Then build features to allow for version control and easy to add new drawings. We hired developers to build the first drawing management software we called Technical Drawing Management System (TDMS), later called “echo.” This was pretty cool; we developed a cloud-based software solution (SaaS) before it was a thing. Remember, this is 2004; Mark Zuckerberg just launched The Facebook on February 4, 2004, which later became Facebook.

Maintenance = Phase 3

We didn’t stop there. We continued to listen to our new TDMS clients and realized that they wanted continued support in maintaining their drawing situations. For some of our clients, the frequency of new projects and revisions was exceedingly high. As a result, the backlog in keeping things up-to-date was intense. Again, we can help; we create drop-off locations at their site and scheduled frequent site visits to gather the new projects and revisions to bring back to the office and upload to the TDMS. Latter, adopting the trusted shipping methods of the world today.

The Creation of baseline = Phase 4

As we continued monitoring our clients’ health related to their drawing management, we noticed a new inefficiency was developing. For our high-frequency drawing creator clients, a new concern was that when retrieving drawings for a given area and discipline of the facility, they may be viewing results of multiple projects and versions. Leaving the user to filter thru and make sure they reference the correct drawing or drawings. Some of the newer projects may only reference a small footprint of a given area that you are required to reference. This results in the user having to know to reference multiple drawings to get the accurate information needed.

So with our redraw service and engineering background, we decided to develop a solution we called baseline by compressing the years of history into a new set of master plans. We also put processes in place to keep the Baseline drawings up-to-date for the future.

Passing the Torch

Darrell’s entrepreneurial vision and determination have built the foundation for DCM Inc. Darrell’s passion for people. Pursuing excellence at DCM is evidenced in his hand-picked “A team” of employees, who meet every job with enthusiasm and accuracy.

One of the greatest attributes our father has taught us is the value of hard work. You get what you work for, not what you wish for. Success is no accident. It is consistent hard work in preparation and execution. So always be learning, studying, and making the necessary sacrifices to lead yourself and your team in any direction you choose.

“Boy, do I have memories of how much I hated him for that. I long as I can remember, as young as nine years old, I never had summer holidays or PA days off. When school had a holiday, I had to work for my dad at 6 am and back home around 5 pm. As much as I hated school, I loved school because it was my holiday. However, I tell you that this is by far the greatest attribute I have, and I owe it all to him. Dragging me out of bed and teach me the value of action and hard work at such a young age. Believe this or not, but I get excited when challenges arise, and we have to work even harder to find our way thru.” – Darryl Mitchell Jr. “He also always told us that we are not entitled to anything. If you want something, then you are going to have to earn it, especially in business. He is excellent at giving you the direction and tools required, but he will definitely not clear the path and drag you along. You have to take action on your own; otherwise, he will find some else who will. I love him for that. This is still true today; we have to continually earn the right to lead our business.” – Darryl Mitchell Jr.

Here is the direction “A Leader is not a title you get; this is what you have to earn.” 

These are your tools: 

1. Focus on empowering others around you and treating them the way you want to be treated.
2. Lead from the heart!
3. Be honest, genuine and give respect. 
4. Listen! Often this simple act of being a good listener is the most powerful method of empowering others. 
5. Lead by example! Do what you preach and say you are going to do. 
6. Believe in your vision and trust the process! 
7. Zoom out to see our dreams and the ability to zoom in to support the actionable steps in the right direction. Only then will you become a true leader for your people.

Both Julie and Darryl have earned Co-CEO positions yesterday but understand that they have to make it today. Together we are more powerful than we are alone. We complement each other’s weaknesses and empower our strengths. We understand where each other are coming from when discussing situations. Having Co-CEO’s is an advantage in leading our company into the future. 

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success” – Henry Ford.

DCM Inc. Today

Sight is the ability to see things as they are – Vision is to see things how they could be!

Our vision for DCM is to simplify the complicated world of Engineering Drawing Management for facilities managers worldwide. We have the privilege of serving thousands of industry leaders worldwide, from homeowners to Enterprise companies across 33 industries. Some are applying all 4 of our product/service offerings, while others only require one piece of our drawing management solution. 

Over the past decades, DCM has processed millions of drawings and has brought clarity and efficiency to thousands of facilities. These visionary leaders have simplified their drawing management by acquiring the Drawing Specialists and our hands-on approach in implementing the ultimate solution in drawing management software, echo. Echo is tailor-made for their business is now the go-to source for thousands of users. With just a few swipes, they can store, search, find, share, and update their engineering drawings. By combining echo’s easy-to-use and functionality with continued hands-on support and our attentive value-added client service, these industry leaders have the confidence that they are providing their team with up-to-the-minute accuracy, regardless of the facility life-cycle.

As we continue to grow, our mission remains the same: 

Simplify Engineering Drawing Management, one facility at a time. By delivering excellence through clear, modernized and straightforward solutions to make them universally accessible and helpful. Back up with industry-respected value-added client service and support.