1990 - 1992: Technical Author - Rolls-Royce Plc, Leavesden Aerodrome, Near Watford, England
While I was at Rolls-Royce I worked mainly on the Gem aero engine, which is a small gas turbine unit used to power the Westland Lynx helicopter. These helicopters are in service in the British Army and Royal Navy. Westland also supplies the Lynx to overseas customers where it is used mainly in a military role.
My main responsibilities on the Gem were the production of all of the service bulletins (and occasionally other manuals) for the engine. These bulletins, produced in ATA100 standard, detail instructions for the implementation of modifications to the engine. Where modifications were required to UK armed forces aircraft, then similar documents were produced to MOD standard AvP70.
Production of service bulletins was instigated by in-house documentation which triggered the draft of the document which I then had to supervise through the system. Regulations required that specific procedures be followed throughout including the appropriate signatures and approvals. Often this required more than a little diplomacy when urgent bulletins were processed, against a backdrop of high workload for the signatory authorities. An example of this was the processing of MOD documents for the Gulf War.
Where service bulletins required technical illustrations then I would be responsible for commissioning this material from our in-house illustrators, often having produced an initial draft for the illustrator to work from.
Once a Bulletin, or other manual revision, had been approved then final typesetting took place. Bear in mind that this was in the early nineties when information technology was only just beginning to reach the defence industry. Typists were tasked with finally preparing the artwork, illustrations would be pasted in manually and printing would be commissioned from MOD approved companies. Once the document was printed and quality checked, my final task was to ensure that the distribution took place smoothly. Properly written instructions for incorporation of the documents into the customers manuals were produced, along with instructions for the destruction of any now redundant old documentation.