Taking Project CAD files home

[mark.kiker]

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?

Do you let people take them home?

Do you think people do it without telling you?

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?

[mom of 3]

please realize, I am not a manager, but this what I am aware of in our company since I've worked here -

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?
not really
Do you let people take them home?
sometimes
Do you think people do it without telling you?
they aren't allowed to as they have to "check out" CAD
Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?
not that I'm aware of
Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?
BIG NO-NO
Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?
no

[rkmcswain]

Hi Mark,

These are not my policies, but I'll report the current status.


Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?
NO
Do you let people take them home?
YES
Do you think people do it without telling you?
YES
Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?
NO
Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?
NO POLICY
Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?
NO POLICY - (We do have a couple of test subjects who have been "assigned" a company desktop machine to use at their home.)

[Brian Myers]

Let me explain my situation. I have currently worked for a reseller for the past 10 months, but this does apply to me as well. Also, it applies in many ways to my 17 years before this in the "real world".


Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?
Nothing in writing, but yes, it is spoken/ethics driven.

Do you let people take them home?
Yes

Do you think people do it without telling you?
Yes

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?
Nothing major, exceptions being messed up fonts, etc related to technical differences and the skills of the employee in that "non-standard" environment. Now there are ethical issues involving side-work and using company details that I could see causing legal issues and should be addressed openly as unacceptable practice.

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?
Not typically... at least not beyond the time required to complete the project.

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?
It's not recommended, but yes, it can be OK.

[robert.1.hall72202]

Any CAD work should be done on a company owned computer.
I would like the cad work to be done on a pc that is secured by
the IT department.

Good luck keeping employees from copying files.
Any PDA, jumpdrive, cd, dvd, and/or similar device can store
large amounts of data.

[pdavis]

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?
Yes/No. The company has remote access, where a user from home can access their company workstation. So, whatever access they have on their workstation at work, they can access via remote access.

We also have laptops that users can "borrow", though I am not sure how often that happens.

Do you let people take them home?
No, again enforcement is tough.

Do you think people do it without telling you?
Yes.

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?
Yes.

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?
No.

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?
No.

[arcadia_x27]

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?
ITs permitted, ITs stated in employee handbook that using compay materials for side work, selling details etc is grounds for termination. on the other hand, work done at home on a project is considered overtime that the employee can put in for.
Do you let people take them home?
yes
Do you think people do it without telling you?
yes but not in the sense that theyre sneaking them out, they just know that if they want to work on something at home they are permitted
Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?
No not really. theres always the chance that they could use details and such outside the company but for the most part our details and blocks are either very specialized to the point that they couldnt be used or are so general that it wouldnt matter.
Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?
Only for the purposes of working on a current project
Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?
yes, provided that they bring their machine in and I install the appropriate software, anti virus and any other blocks, lisp routines etc. (our software licenses permit the use of our corporate anti virus and other software at home as long as the person is in the employ of the company.)

[Maverick91]

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?We don't that I'm aware of.


Do you let people take them home?I'm the only CAD guy here. I have allowed myself to take work home before.


Do you think people do it without telling you?I'm sure it happens. Many of our managers like to work at home during the day.


Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?Just keeping all files sync'ed and current.


Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?Not specifically.


Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?If I'm taking work home, I'll use my home computer.

[ekubaskie]

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?

Do you let people take them home?

Do you think people do it without telling you?

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?

Our policy is to get the job done. If an employee is willing to work over the weekend at home, that's cool. Particularly for myself - I'm not willing to spend my weekend sitting in my office.

Like Doug, I'm the only CAD guy here right now. I let myself take work home - but never without letting myself know about it! I don't keep files on my own system longer than it takes to do the work, but I do the work on my own box. Which, BTW, is a lot more box than the company will pop for.

[Railrose]

The company I contract out to prefers that I don't take work home, but made an exception when my Father-in-law had surgery & I had a major deadline.

Edit: The computer belonged to the company with the company's software to prevent corruptions.

[jpduhon]

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?

Do you let people take them home?

Do you think people do it without telling you?

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?At my last firm we ran into a massive problem when someone took files home and worked on them using an educational version of AutoCAD. Autodesk's famed Educational plot stamp works like a virus and within two weeks we had infected four or five projects and almost all consultants working on those projects. It brought all work to a halt for a few days while we had to then PAY AUTODESK TO CLEAN OUR FILES. After that we had a very strict policy.

At this firm I am allowing installations at home using VPN for network licensing but I am offering absolutely no support so if they screw up their home machines, c'est la vie. The principals understand the implications (no standard folder environment, potential infected computer, etc.) but that is something that they really want.

Thanks for asking the question Mark. The different answers are interesting. If I had more say in the matter I would have a strict no-cad-work-at-home-period policy. But that's probably unrealistic.

[robert.1.hall72202]

At my last firm we ran into a massive problem when someone took files home and worked on them using an educational version of AutoCAD.

Ouch! I am guessing that wasn't a company owned version of AutoCad?
All of the cad work would be illegal for commercial purposes.

[Richard McDonald]

One thing that I don't think anybody has suggested is Health and Safety.

I'm not sure on the different legislation around the world but in England whilst you are working you come under the H&S rules and regs. Therefore your home workspace should be inspected by the companies own H&S people to see if its passes mustard. A lot of companies flout this regulation at there own risk, it can be only a matter of time before someone injures themselves on there own faulty home and sues the company.

[jpduhon]

Ouch! I am guessing that wasn't a company owned version of AutoCad?
All of the cad work would be illegal for commercial purposes.We were aware of that, and (trust me) so is Autodesk. I think I had traced the source back to a consultant's drawings but since I did not know how to prove it and the company was the owner's consultants and not ours, we couldn't do anything about it.

Autodesk graciously :roll: enabled ACAD 06 to check for the educational plot stamp prior to opening so from then out no one should run into that problem again.

[jpduhon]

One thing that I don't think anybody has suggested is Health and Safety.

I'm not sure on the different legislation around the world but in England whilst you are working you come under the H&S rules and regs. Therefore your home workspace should be inspected by the companies own H&S people to see if its passes mustard. A lot of companies flout this regulation at there own risk, it can be only a matter of time before someone injures themselves on there own faulty home and sues the company.Does anyone know if there is an equivilant regulation in the states? We don't have anyone in-house and I don't know of any inspections that have ever happened regarding workspace settings.

Mark, I would assume you would be more aware of this than most.

[CADDmanVA]

Here's our firm's officially un-official working at home (or Starschmucks) policy. Our firm employs six, so we're not too strict with the policy. Heck, our IT department is myself and one other person. The only time we work at home is when we're snowed in, or can't come in due to an illness, sick child, etc. It works for us though...

Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on? sort of, but not really or officially

Do you let people take them home? No, per sei, we access the internal file server via FTP.

Do you think people do it without telling you? Oh well, we're a trusting sort of lot

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home? Only with CADD Standards related materials. We use a third party app (AutoLayer) to manage our huge (250) pile of discipline-dependant layers. Sometimes you forget to make sure you have the most recent dot revision of the standard, however, that's pretty easily fixed with LAYTRANS.

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines? Yup

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work? Yup, most of us have laptops which we use for company purposes too

[dhurd]

It has been our experience that nothing good can come about from having data in more than one location (unless it's a backup).

Our firm has set up remote access thru Windows "Remote Desktop Connection". It has been greatly successful. Aside from a slight slowdown, it's the same as being at work (running cable ISP at home and work, about 2-3 Mbps). We remotely log into our work desktops and it functions exactly the same as if we were in the office. Your home computer just displays what your work desktop is doing. I do miss having the two monitors that I have at work though. I don't miss the commute.

[Railrose]

It has been our experience that nothing good can come about from having data in more than one location (unless it's a backup).

Our firm has set up remote access thru Windows "Remote Desktop Connection". It has been greatly successful. Aside from a slight slowdown, it's the same as being at work (running cable ISP at home and work, about 2-3 Mbps). We remotely log into our work desktops and it functions exactly the same as if we were in the office. Your home computer just displays what your work desktop is doing. I do miss having the two monitors that I have at work though. I don't miss the commute.
I wish corp would allow that. This is one paranoid bunch. Personal computers are not allowed to connect to their servers in any way.

[dtamplen]

We are also a small company. We have three full time CAD guys and a couple of PM's that like to play with CAD. We don't have a written policy, but we do take stuff home occasionally. In cases of snow or sick kids we can have remote access. We also take stuff home on jump drives or on laptops. We haven't had any problems yet, but there's always a first time.

[CADDmanVA]

We are also a small company. We have three full time CAD guys and a couple of PM's that like to play with CAD. We don't have a written policy, but we do take stuff home occasionally. In cases of snow or sick kids we can have remote access. We also take stuff home on jump drives or on laptops. We haven't had any problems yet, but there's always a first time.True, there is always that first time, but we hope it never comes! We try to stave off the first time by restricting ourselves to only downloading across FTP, and avoiding multiple copies on laptops, thumb drives, etc. Seems to work so far, but it boils down to being a "self-policing" type of situation.

[Wanderer]

We dont' currently have a policy in my company about it.

Yes, 3 of us take files home to work on.

I don't require anyone to tell me and management had not urged me to do so.

No problems so far, but, we tend to work on different types of drawings, and we're the only ones who work on them. (space/signage, cabling, and arch/mep)

The other two haven't used personal machines for their work yet, but, over the years, I have brought in whatever laptop I owned at the time for the convenience of certain projects, but, it isn't authorized to log into our network (I *can* ask IT for that right and help setting it up, but, have not done so because I have not had the need).

I work for a VERY large company with dedicated IT, but, our main concern is medical data, all of which is secured and not allowed to be taken home.
Does anyone have a policy related to employees taking company project files home to work on?

Do you let people take them home?

Do you think people do it without telling you?

Have you seen any problems with people taking things home?

Do you allow company files to be stored on personal machines?

Do you allow personal machines to be used for company work?