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Procedure Documentation

5 min read

Parent
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Knowledge Preservation
Current
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Procedure Documentation

A procedure document records the goal, materials, tools, numbered steps, common mistakes and quality check of a critical task, written so that a person who has never done it can follow it when the expert is absent. Prove it by having a novice follow it unaided, keep at least two checked copies in different places, and let only a named owner change it, because a procedure with one wrong number copied around the village is worse than none.

Part of Apprenticeship System Design & Knowledge Transfer

Writing down how critical tasks are done so that knowledge survives its holder, and keeping those documents correct.

Why Write It Down At All

The corpus’s Knowledge Preservation article makes the case: the greatest long-term threat to a community’s competency is losing the knowledge its people hold, and the loss is invisible until a crisis shows that nobody knows how to handle it. Knowledge that exists in one memory is a liability. The same article names three kinds worth preserving: technical procedures, diagnostic judgement and institutional memory. This article deals with the first.

The carrier says to write for the person who has never done the task, because the whole point of documentation is to make knowledge usable when the expert is unavailable. The Cross-Training article turns that into a test: the backup should be able to take over after two hours of briefing, which only works if there is documentation to hand over.

The Six Parts

The carrier lists what a good procedure document includes:

  1. What you are making or doing, as a clear goal.
  2. Materials needed, with quantities.
  3. Tools needed, with acceptable substitutes.
  4. Step-by-step instructions, numbered, specific, assuming nothing.
  5. Common mistakes, what goes wrong and how to fix it.
  6. A quality check, to verify the result.

The Knowledge Preservation article adds that a role manual should also hold emergency protocols (what to do if something serious goes wrong), where tools and materials are kept, and training notes for apprentices, and that it should be updated quarterly or after any significant change in practice.

What You Need

  • A named owner for each procedure, the person who does the task.
  • A reader who has never done it, to test the draft.
  • Paper or another durable medium, and a place to store copies (Record Keeping).
  • At least two copies in separate places. Knowledge Preservation sets higher numbers of copies for survival knowledge, and the Redundant Copies article gives the reason: a text with one copy is already half lost.

Method: Writing And Controlling A Procedure

Step 1: Watch the task being done and write what you see, not what the expert says they do. Experts leave out steps that have become automatic.

Step 2: Write each step as one action with its expected result: “the stripe turns colour”, “steam flows steadily from the vent”.

Step 3: Mark the dangerous steps in a box, with the stop condition: when to stop, who to call.

Step 4: Leave out numbers you cannot source. Where a value belongs to a particular machine, write “from the nameplate” or “from the vessel log” and say where it is.

Step 5: Test with a novice. The author stays silent while a person who has never done the task follows the page. Every question they ask is a gap, and every mistake they make is a missing warning.

Step 6: Fix and test again.

Step 7: Control the copies. Date and number each copy. The Pressure and time requirements article gives the model for a high-stakes document: keep the source in one protected place, copy by checking and not by recall, keep two independent copies compared line by line, and treat any remembered table as unverified.

Step 8: Review on a schedule. The Knowledge Preservation article says quarterly, or at any significant change.

Worked Example: Outline Of An Autoclave Procedure

A village autoclave procedure would run to these headings, with no figure of its own:

  • Goal: what the cycle is for, and which load schedule applies.
  • Before you start: read the vessel log; relief valve seal intact; interlock and gauge checks.
  • Loading: how and where.
  • Heating and venting: purge until steam flows steadily; compare gauge with thermometer.
  • Hold: pressure and time from the load’s schedule; the stop rules.
  • Cooling and opening: never open above zero pressure.
  • Record: log entry.
  • If something goes wrong: relief valve lifts, gasket leaks, gauge and thermometer disagree. Shut off heat, let the vessel cool, do not tighten under pressure, report.

Common Mistakes

  • Writing for yourself. The author cannot see their own missing steps.
  • A number from memory. It becomes the standing rule.
  • One copy in the workshop. Fire takes both the vessel and the page.
  • No stop conditions.
  • No owner, so the page ages out of date.

What’s Next