Filing cabinets in the contemporary office environment
The humble office filer rarely attracts a great deal of thought in our busy offices but a decent filing cabinet should provide many years of trouble free usage. Even with the current trend towards the paperless office, filing cabinets are still in great demand as the reality is that the majority of offices still produce huge amounts of written documentation and paperwork that needs to be filed away.
Filing cabinets are invariably constructed from either metal or wood. Of the two materials frequently used, metal filing cabinets are lighter, stronger, longer lasting and usually are supplied with a manufacturer’s guarantee of between 5 and 15 years dependant upon the quality of the filing cabinet that has been purchased. Wooden filing cabinets are still extremely functional but generally are supplied with a guarantee of between 1 and 5 years.
Filing cabinets are designed to store tab files that hang on tracking inside each filing drawer. One critical design option to watch out for when deciding upon a filing cabinet is 100% drawer extension. This is where the internal drawers are designed to pull out 100% so that even the files at the extreme rear of the drawer can be easily accessed without having to fumble about inside the cabinet to retrieve files. Another important requirement is the anti tilt device which functions by stopping more than one drawer being opened simultaneously otherwise the weight of two drawers of files could easily cause a cabinet to fall over. Files are recommended to be loaded into the lowest drawers of the filing cabinet initially to aid stability of the cabinet.
There are two standard sizes of suspension file in Europe, foolscap and A4. Foolscap is by far the most commonly used size used in Britain and Ireland, whereas A4 is the most common size in continental Europe. The runners that support the suspension files are usually built into the top of the drawer sides in a standard filing cabinet so the suspension files are usually designed to run from front to back. Some filing cabinets include conversion fittings to allow either foolscap or A4 sizes to be stored. It is important to note that the drawer bottoms in filing cabinets (and especially in wooden filing cabinets) are not usually designed to support heavy box files and so the filing cabinets must not be used as standard drawers.
Bisley filing cabinets are without doubt the leading brand for steel filing cabinets and their top of the range BS series of cabinets are designed with durability in mind and are usually delivered with a 10 or 15 year manufacturer’s guarantee. The BS series features fully welded construction with twin skinned drawer fronts. Drawers are fitted on roller ball bearing slides which deliver ultra-smooth action and full drawer extension. The Bisley BS range includes two, three, four and five drawer versions all of which accept either foolscap or A4 filing. The BS4E 4 drawer unit delivers more than 2 linear meters of filing storage.
