Tracey, I've had the same responsibilities in past employment, the biggest and probably most important aspect of retaining some kind of standardization is directory structures. ...
DCG, can you expand how you could enforce the directory structures. Once it gets past the drive letter its OK, but some other offices may not map the drive letters the same as ours, and that is wayy beyond my control
Jonesy, if you are trying to manage all this across several offices, you
really should look into a document management system, it would make your life just SOooooo much easier.
You can share ONE block library across all the offices, control the directory structure any way you wish, and no-one can interfere with it, forget about revision control, never have to worry about losing a drawing, know who's got which drawing at any time, know who did what to any drawing at any time... the list goes on.....
The money spent on a good EDMS would be recouped in one project with time saved and problems solved, and the cost isn't that great when it comes down to it, it really isn't. Everything after that is just increased profit.
I know I keep spouting on about this but your question comes up so many times and there is an easy answer (or relatively easy)
pm me if you want to chat about it