Over the years employees will arrive and leave. When they leave their knowledge and information goes with them. That's why, especially in a design environment, handbooks should always be considered as a way of capturing project knowledge.

Moreover they allow others to use this knowledge, which saves 'reinventing the wheel' every time a calculation or procedure needs to be performed.

Engineer A spends 50 hours at an overhead rate of £55 per hour finding and working on a series of calculations for Project X. He consults Engineer B for 5 hours, at his overhead rate of £60 per hour. This costs £3050.

Six months later Engineer C works on Project Y, which is a scaled up version of Project X. She spends 50 hours, at £55 per hour, finding and working on the same series of calculations, and spends another 5 hours with Engineer B. This costs another £3050.

Four months later, after Engineer B has retired, she has to revise the design, and spends 25 hours revisiting the same calculations, and an additional 10 hours trying to determine why she made certain decisions and used certain values, which could otherwise have been arrived at with Engineer B. This costs £1925, and £250 of this could have been saved if Engineer B's knowledge had been available.

So over and above the actual project work costs, the company has spent £4975 on preparation, which was essentially avoidable had the calculation methods been documented in an easily usable fashion.

If the company were to undertake similar projects in the future then the preparation costs would be in excess of £1900 each time, or significantly more if Engineer C were to leave.

Handbooks don't have to be a folder of calculations, to be rigorously copied and input into a calculator, but can be dynamic electronic documents that can contain electronic versions of the methods, along with the assumptions and thinking that went into the original calculations.

Mcilwain & Associates can offer a handbook compilation development and production service by looking at your processes and projects.

Perhaps you want a bespoke handbook integrated with your product catalogue. This can be distributed to your customers, so that you become their first choice for equipment or processes due to your 'total solution' service.

If your company is looking to develop new calculation methods for projects then the mathematical modeling and simulation page may also be of interest. Click here to jump to it.

For enquiries about handbook development please email information@mcilwainandassociates.com

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