Documentation for equipment where being approximately right is not good enough.
Manuals, maintenance documents, health check guides, installation guides and datasheets, authored from drawings, specifications and engineer input, with every value traced to the document or the named engineer it came from. Remediation after an assessment, or new documentation from the start.
Deliverablesfive readers
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.
Maintenance manual
Trained maintenance engineer. Scheduled and corrective maintenance, isolation, wear and failure, removal and refit, torque and setting values, spare parts.
Health check guide
Service engineer. Condition assessment with a pass criterion on every check, issued with its record sheet as one deliverable.
Installation manual
Installation and commissioning engineer. Site preparation, services, lifting data, mounting tolerances, connection sequence, commissioning tests, handover record.
Datasheet
Specifier and buyer. Specification, performance and ordering information, checked against the manual rather than written in isolation.
The set
Every one of the above held in a single register of values, terms and claims, so the family stays consistent with itself.
Methodthree gates
Three points decide whether a document set is sound. The rest is craft.
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.
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.
The 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.
Most material defects in technical documentation sit between documents rather than inside them. See what that looks like.
Workingwhat it should not cost you
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, 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 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.
Sectorsby characteristic
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.
Machine builders
Industrial machinery and equipment, including products in scope of Regulation (EU) 2023/1230.
Commercial vehicle manufacturing
Vehicle build, subsystem and aftermarket documentation, including equipment mounted on vehicles.
Automotive supply
Component and subsystem documentation authored to the customer's document standards.
Send one product family. We will tell you what sits between the documents.
A non-disclosure agreement is in place before any technical material is received.
- The manufacturer and the product family involved
- Which documents exist, and which are referred to but not held
- Whether this is pre-bind, renewal, a risk improvement condition, or a claim
- Your timescale