Operations and Maintenance Manuals Editing and Proofreading Services

A fitter is standing in front of a pump at half past six in the morning with a manual in one hand. They do not want to understand the pump. They want to know which bolts to slacken, in what order, to what torque, and whether the thing is going to spray hot oil at them when they take the cover off. Almost every manual ever written answers the first question they did not ask.

We edit what manufacturers and asset owners produce — operation and maintenance manuals and their task instructions, planned maintenance schedules and task lists, isolation and permit requirements for maintenance tasks, torque, clearance and consumable schedules, fault-finding and diagnostic guides, spare parts identification and ordering information, lubrication schedules and specifications, commissioning and recommissioning procedures, storage and long-term shutdown instructions, and handover documentation for facilities teams. Our editors work on the task a fitter performs at half past six.

The maintenance task instruction is the working part of an O&M manual, and its failure is describing the equipment instead of the job. A section explaining the operating principle of a mechanical seal is interesting; the fitter needs the sequence. We work through these so each task is a numbered sequence of physical actions in the order they happen, with the tool and the value beside the step rather than in a table at the back, since a torque figure eleven pages away is a torque figure nobody looks up; so the isolation and stored-energy release is the first step of every task rather than a general warning, and it names what to isolate and how to prove it, given that the general safety section is read once and the task is read every time; so anything that will surprise the fitter is stated at the step where it happens — the residual pressure, the spring under the cover, the shaft that drops when the coupling comes off; so the parts needed are listed at the start with their part numbers, because a task begun and abandoned for want of a gasket is the commonest maintenance failure; so the reassembly steps state what to check before closing up, as this is the only moment when a mistake is cheap; so each task carries a realistic time and the number of people needed; and so the schedule states what the task is preventing, since a fitter who knows why the filter matters changes it properly. Manuals written this way get used rather than shelved.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including manuals, procedures and asset documentation. We are editors rather than maintenance or plant engineers, and we offer no view on procedures, intervals or safe systems of work. What we can do is make the instruction match the order the work happens in.