Countdown to new District Court Building, Perth, Western Australia

Multiplex Constructions is building the new Perth District Court (the middle tier court in the judicial system) and the last possible contractual start date is 5 May 2008. The building is state of the art, with many energy efficiencies. Merrill is planning to send all the audio recorded in the central monitoring room in the court building to our transcription office directly across the road via a laser link from building to building. All those audio files being zapped across the road - we’re not sure how the birds will fly through the beam and whether or not it will break the connection!

Daily transcripts must be provided to the court every 90 minutes from the commencement of the proceedings; we are expecting approximately 15 daily transcripts, as well as one, two or seven day deferred transcript requests. We estimate we’ll need the equivalent of 15 to 20 full-time typists in the office, as well as up to 30 home typists. We’ll also need about eight full-time monitors to record the hearings. As a result, we have a major recruitment drive underway.

The transcripts must be delivered in XML format, which has meant that for the last six months a full-time programmer has been developing a program to convert Word transcripts to XML. It’s exacting, so near enough isn’t good enough as the transcripts will be rejected when they’re sent through to the State’s web service.

The programmer has also been developing a Transcription Operation Management System (TOMS) primarily to cover transcript and monitoring order management. The system tracks both the transcription or monitoring orders throughout the system and has a comprehensive reporting mechanism to ensure all orders are processed in the most efficient manner possible.

Orders are received through the State Government interface to TOMS and provide information such as the court number, matter number, name of presiding officer, appearances by counsel and, in some instances, a glossary of names and terms, i.e. all court listing information. This information is available to the monitor whilst recording the proceeding and to the transcription officer during the course of transcribing the proceeding.

Neil Griffin, our Australian Managing Director, says: “It’s an interesting and challenging project and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to be involved. A lot of hard work has already been done by several people in the company, and it will be very rewarding, come 5 May, when the switch is flicked and it’s all systems go.”

For further information on our Australian services, please contact Neil Griffin at neil.griffin@merrillcorp.com