Contracting as a Technical Author and Copywriter

Contracting

This page shows most of the full time contracts I have worked.

Contracting, as opposed to freelance work, usually means working full time on a client's site using their equipment in much the same way as a normal employee. The only difference is that the contractor does not get the same terms of employment nor enjoy any job security, however, the money usually compensates.

Midwest Publications
February to November 2005
During my time at Midwest Publications I worked on a number of projects including work for Smiths Actuators, Goodrich Actuation Systems and an electronics manual for Trio Motion Technologies.

The work for Smiths Actuators required second line servicing instructions of the aileron actuators for the new Nimrod MRA4 for the RAF, which is due to go into service in 2009. This involved production of seven or eight documentary modules in structured SGML, using Epic, writing to the AECMA S100D standard.

I am not an actuator specialist so it was a coincidence that my next project required the production of a complete set of documentary units for the new Dassault Falcon 7X business jet. This is a mechanical actuation system for the wing flaps which required some 40 documents plus illustrations. This project was created in structured SGML, using Epic, written to the ATA iSpec 2200 standard.

Finally I produced a Hardware Reference Manual for TrajeXia, a joint project between Trio Motion Technologies and Omron. This project was one of two manuals that Midwest Publications produced for the Omron branded TrajeXia motion control system. The manual covered all aspects of the TrajeXia modules from out of the box inspection, through detailed functionality of the units including pinouts of connectors, to installation and set up prior to programming.

CKL/Honda
September to December 2004
Working for CKL, a documentation company in Hitchin on a project for Honda cars.

This project was as much business process consultancy as it was documentation. The client needed to reduce their spend on refurbishment of ex-fleet cars that were passed on, for resale, via their dealer network. Their problem was that vehicles were getting to the end of their life-cycle with unreported damage that Honda had to pay for. This meant that the project had to be treated with kid gloves as, when new processes were put in place, Honda would save money but somebody else could be out of pocket.

I spent a couple of months learning about all aspects of the life-cycle of their vehicles. This ran from delivery as a brand new car, through its life-cycle including tracking of any accident damage, to final hand-over and the inspection and repair process at the end.

Once I had analysed the processes involved, it became apparent where and how damage might go unrecorded. From this point the task became more like a normal documentation project, requiring procedures for all aspects of the vehicle life-cycle including inspection, hand-over, help line data capture, etc. A user guide for the drivers was designed describing their responsibilities and giving them full information on care of their car, procedures for reporting damage, what to do in the event of an accident, flat tyre or broken windscreen, etc. It also became apparent that merely reporting the damage was not going to be sufficient as there was a need for better data recording of vehicle damage. To this end a modification to the companies vehicle database was recommended.

The end result was a comprehensive set of documents including a policy for company car damages, user guide, help line recording procedures, recommended database structure, inspection standards, and recommendations for recovery of uninsured losses and excessive wear and tear.

Plain Words/Symbian
November 2003
Copy editing for a CD describing software applications developed for Symbian OS mobile phones. This work was strictly in compliance with Symbian style guidelines and had to be completed by a specific deadline laid out in the project plan.

Hays IT
November to December 2002
Data cleaning on J. D. Edwards implementation for car component manufacturer (no names, no packdrill). This was not a sophisticated project. My time was spent assisting in the cleaning of data on an ERP implementation that was experiencing difficulties. Most of the work was with spreadsheets or directly on the master data within the J. D. Edwards system. My experience with SAP was probably what got me this job but it probably didn't count for much in the long run. It was a bit of an eye opener to see what can go wrong on an ERP project if it isn't handled correctly and led to me offering the ERP Documentation Project Management Services that I describe here as it struck me that better information (documentation) for all concerned would have helped.

SAP, Feltham, London
August to September 2001 & July 2002
Back at SAP to perform updates to the documentation set and help system (see below) to incorporate changes covering version 4.6C Release 1.00 and other developments. These were a series of minor changes including some changes to the HTML files in the help system and an update of the full documentation set to reflect new version numbering.

These small projects were a step forward as it meant working directly for SAP rather than through an agent and means that Winged Feet Ltd. is now on the SAP approved suppliers list.

Software used - MS Word 97, MS Excel, Adobe Acrobat 4, MS Outlook, RWD Info Pak, Dreamweaver 4, JASC Paint Shop Pro 7, SAP R/3 & Connect & Go - Windows NT.

Note: My role at SAP was largely documentation management and most of the documents were created by the developers so my SAP skills are limited. For a longer description of my SAP skills and what I might do for you follow this link.

SAP, Feltham, London
June 2000 to March 2001
Documentation Manager on the development project for SAP's new Connect & Go project for version 4.6B release 1 and release 2. This is a preconfigured, cut down version of their full R/3 Enterprise Resource Planning product. The project called for a full set of documents from pre-sales through implementation to training materials.

Developed by a team in Britain the Connect & Go product was designed with small to medium UK enterprises in mind to be delivered as a hosted solution via Application Service Providers. However, once the product reached completion it was taken on by SAP Hosting in Germany to be developed for the full European market during 2001. Since then it has begun to be adopted by other users as a fast-start option throughout Britain.

The documentation set had to be managed for issues such as branding and copyright status. Some documents were left in MS Word format as they were intended for conversion by Application Service Providers for their own use, while others were converted to PDF format to ensure the integrity of the contents. Adobe Acrobat Reader installation files were supplied on the CD with the documentation package to ensure that the set could be used as a stand alone package.

SAP systems are designed in a functional modular way covering all aspects of enterprise management. Therefore the product covers the following:

Each of these functional areas required a full set of documents which would take the product through its sales and implementation cycle. The full document set consisted of:

Once the development process was complete and the product was delivered we developed an HTML help system using RWD Info-Pak. This package records transactions within the SAP system and generates an MS Word file complete with screen dumps, field description tables, notes, warnings and cautions etc., giving a complete step by step guide to performing a transaction within the SAP system. This could be anything from generating a purchase order, hiring an employee or creating a customer account. Overall there were 343 transactions recorded by the eight strong development team with a further team of six editors checking the documents for formatting and style etc.

These Word documents were later converted, using Info-Pak's publishing tool to generate HTML cue cards. This meant that formatting issues were crucial otherwise the macro set that performed the publishing would not be able to make the conversion into HTML. Having been the first author on the team I was by this time the last, so it was down to me to use Dreamweaver to generate a graphical navigation interface, which allows the user to click through a series of process flow charts until the instructions for the required transaction are located. Just to give an indication of the scale of this project, Dreamweaver statistics for the site indicated that there were over 5100 pages of HTML with over 14000 files in total. Fortunately most of this consisted of the HTML documents and images created automatically by Info-Pak otherwise I would still be connecting the 31000 links to this very day.

Once the interface had been built the system was augmented by a utility provided by RWD Technologies called Help LaunchPad which is used as a client or server side application to call up the relevant instruction when a user calls up custom help.

Software used - MS Word 97, MS Excel, Adobe Acrobat 3 & 4, MS Outlook, RWD Info Pak, Dreamweaver 4, Framemaker, SAP R/3 & Connect & Go - Windows NT.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM, Amsterdam & Reading
June to November 1998
Working on the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand to form PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). This project required the documentation of the new MS Word and AmiPro templates package for all PwC letters, memos and fax cover sheets. This package had multi-language functionality; including document, letterhead and interface language options all available to the 140,000 end users in 152 countries world wide.

I was responsible for the production of user documentation, and a Customisation Manual which included reference details and through commenting of the extensive INI files that formed the central core of the package. I then converted the User Manual into an online help system using Microsoft Help Compilers Workshop.

During the project I also had responsibility for the logging and tracking of the all bugs and development tasks reported from users and project developers alike. For this task we set up an MS Access (97) database which, although I did not create, I was primarily responsible for the interface design and structure. I then used this database to keep records off all development tasks, including categorisation and prioritisation. Once created the data was available to the development team and project leaders allowing decisions to be made about inclusion of various features, bug fixes and enhancements.

The project started in Amsterdam in early June and moved to Reading (Berkshire in England), once the initial development had taken place. This contract was administered by IBM as the prime contractor, subcontracted to Manpower IT Services who, in turn, had a contract with Winged Feet Limited.

Software used - MS Word 97, AmiPro, Lotus Notes, Access 97 & HCW (Help Compilers Workshop) Also some experimentation with HDK (Hypertext Developers Kit) which was later abandoned in favour of HCW - Windows 95.

OMI Logistics, Handforth, Cheshire
February to March 1998
Working as part of a team updating a suite of manuals for Adidas, the major international sportswear supplier. These manuals covered the whole of their internal IT systems from stock and warehouse control systems, to invoicing, order processing and purchasing. During the project I also had a major part in the creation of the client's IT procedures manual. This included the collation of existing disparate files and data, chapterisation and indexing. This whole suite of manuals was the starting point for the companies year 2000 audit.

The project required the conversion and updating of old WordStar files, via ASCII format to MS Word 6/Windows 95. The manual included Illustrations of every screen on the client's mainframe system, which had to be replaced as the WordStar versions were represented without a graphics function. Instead they were represented using underscore, colons and other text characters. These prehistoric graphics had to be individually identified and replaced by grabbed screen shots (generated in Paint Shop Pro) which were then embedded, using Windows OLE, in the converted documents.

Merlin Gerin, Harrow, London
April to May 1996
Working with electronic copies of operations and installation manuals about uninterruptible power supplies installed within the infrastructure of a building and used to protect office and computer systems. The original documents were produced at Merlin Gerin's head office in France. My work began with the installation of Pagemaker and Adobe Illustrator and the preparation of directory structures for the permanent retention of the documents. This included setting up an archive, defining read-only and working copies of the documents, and deciding on locations for both images and document files. Suitable substitute fonts had to be decided upon as these differed from those locally available. This involved finding appropriate fonts to cater for special character use such as bullet lists, footnotes and other document specific needs.

The documents were converted to the local version of Pagemaker as this differed from that on which the originals were produced. These were supplied to me on a pile of floppies, as a collection of Pagemaker files along with a separate set of Illustrator files. There was very little information on which files related to which image location, even though there was often very little difference between some of the images. This involved me developing an understanding of the product through a relationship with the installation engineers alongside whom I was working. The graphics had to be linked in, using Windows OLE, after investigation of which image applied to which position in each document. Having been produced on a separate drawing package in France, the graphics files also required conversion to Adobe Illustrator. I finally printed and bound a set of manuals for submission to the customer, the British Civil Aviation Authority.