File structure for technical documents

New engineers and designers entering the workforce — here is a key piece of advice that I would give myself if I was 22 again.

Develop your own personal knowledge base — your own personal technical library.

Having a well-organized, personal technical library ensures that you always have immediate access to critical information. You won't waste time searching the internet or calling vendors when you need to find something quickly.

Use a folder structure with root folders "part information", "standards and codes" and "theory".

Part information folder has sub-folders by equipment type. Use a comma to separate different types of key equipment (e.g. "Cable, tray" and "Cable, low-voltage"). Within each equipment folder, the sub-folders are by the various vendor or manufacturers. Note, I've tried organizing by vendor first, then equipment type, but I find this doesn't work well (jumping around a lot). In the vendor folder are the manuals, data sheets, and catalogs. For tables in the manuals that I reference a lot, I will take a snippet of the table and paste the image into the vendor folder for easy reference in the future.

The Standards folder has sub-folders by the organization (e.g. "IEEE" or "CSA"). The sub-folders within each standard organization can be either by chronological order (standard number) or by equipment type (e.g. all substation standards for that organization).

The Theory folder contains textbooks, white papers, seminars, etc. It has sub-folders by topic or equipment. E.g. a folder for electrical protection.

Some resources may be proprietary or confidential and cannot be easily found or shared online. Having these in your personal library can be necessary for your work (assuming you have the appropriate access!)

Note, this is supposed to be your personal technical library for lifetime use. I would caution against sharing access or not owning/controlling the server where the documents are saved. It is likely you will change employers, so keep that in mind — the whole purpose of this repository is to not have to start from scratch again.

You can use the cloud (I use OneDrive), but I would encourage a cloud solution that is built into File Explorer / Finder, as the easier a solution is, the more you will use it.

Let me know if you have any improvements on this!