Technical documentation
Documentation for equipment where being approximately right is not good enough.
Manuals, maintenance documents, health check guides, installation guides and datasheets for machinery, commercial vehicle and automotive supply. Authored from drawings, specifications and subject matter expert input — with every value traced to the document or the named engineer it came from.
Deliverables
Five document types, each written for a different reader doing a different job.
A manual written as though the operator, the installer and the service engineer are the same person serves none of them. Each type is scoped to its reader, their competence, and what they are holding while they read it.
User manual
Operator
Intended use, controls, normal operation, warnings and residual risks. Written to the competence the design assumes, not the competence the author has.
Maintenance manual
Trained maintenance engineer
Scheduled and corrective maintenance, isolation, wear and failure, removal and refit sequences, torque and setting values, spare parts. Isolation content gates the rest of the document.
Health check guide
Service engineer
Condition assessment with a pass criterion on every check. Issued with its record sheet as one deliverable — every check maps to a record line, and every record line to a check.Paired deliverable
Installation manual
Installation and commissioning engineer
Site preparation, services, handling and lifting data, mounting and levelling tolerances, connection sequence, commissioning tests with acceptance criteria, handover record.
Datasheet
Specifier and buyer
Specification, performance and ordering information. Checked against the manual rather than written in isolation — under the Machinery Regulation, sales literature must not contradict the instructions on health and safety.
How the work runs
Three points decide whether a document set is sound. The rest is craft.
Gate · sources
Nothing is written around a missing source
Drawings and specifications are requested with their issue number, and a source of unknown issue is treated as missing. Where something has not arrived, the section carries a visible marker rather than a plausible sentence.
Gate · elicitation
Engineers are asked, not guessed at
Where the product cannot be handled, knowledge is drawn from installers, service engineers and design engineers using question sets built for each. Values given from memory are recorded against the person and the date, then verified.
Gate · the set
The document set is the unit of work
Values, terminology and compliance claims are held in a register spanning every document in the family. Changing a figure in one document surfaces every other document that holds it.
Sectors
Complex, configurable, safety-critical products with variants and service obligations.
The common ground is not the industry. It is products with real hazards, multiple configurations, a service life measured in decades, and regulatory exposure attached to the paperwork.
MACHINERY
Machine builders
Industrial machinery and equipment, including products in scope of Regulation (EU) 2023/1230.
VEHICLE
Commercial vehicle manufacturing
Vehicle build, subsystem and aftermarket documentation, including equipment mounted on vehicles.
SUPPLY
Automotive supply
Component and subsystem documentation authored to the customer's document standards.
Working method
What working with an external author should not cost you.
- British English throughout, or your house standard where you hold one.
- Your templates and terminology — client conventions are held as a profile and applied consistently across everything written for you.
- A defined review chain — every comment reaches a recorded disposition. An open comment blocks publication; a declined comment is recorded with the reason and the name.
- Revision discipline — anything that changes what a reader would do carries a new revision. Issued documents are not edited in place.
- Legal and compliance rulings tracked as a dated log, so a ruling made on one document produces a list of every other document exposed to it.
- Remote delivery as standard, with site attendance where the product genuinely cannot be understood any other way.
Before you send anything
The NDA is signed first. Then the drawings arrive.
Assessing documentation means seeing drawings, specifications, risk assessments and technical files — the material a manufacturer is most careful with. That is understood, and the order of events reflects it.
01 · Before
Nothing is received unsigned
A non-disclosure agreement is in place before any technical material is sent. Yours or ours, whichever your legal team prefers — the point is that it exists first, not who drafted it.
02 · During
Used only for your engagement
Material is used solely for the work it was supplied for. It is not shared with any third party, and it is not used as an example, a portfolio piece or a demonstration.
03 · After
Returned or destroyed on request
At the close of an engagement, material is returned or destroyed on request, and confirmation is given in writing.
Bring a product and the drawings. We will tell you what is missing.
New documentation, a set that needs rebuilding, or a single deliverable to a deadline.