2025
Cutting commissioning manual production from seven months to four
A governed, approval-gated toolchain for assembling and generating handover documentation — about a 40% reduction, with transcription error removed.
- Governed generative AI
- Structured content capture
- Document generation
- Access control
The problem
Commissioning manual production is where handover programs quietly lose time. Source content sat with different coordinators in different formats, assembly was manual, and every transcription step introduced the possibility of error into a document set that has to be correct.
What I did
A two-stage toolchain. First a structured collection tool that let the coordination team assemble source content in a controlled format. Then an approval-gated generator that produced the manuals themselves only once content had been signed off. Confidentiality, access control and auditability were treated as requirements rather than afterthoughts.
What changed
Production went from seven months to four — roughly a 40% reduction — and transcription error was eliminated from the process rather than caught later in review.
What I took from it
The approval gate was the part that made it acceptable to the people who had to sign the output. Automation that removes a human decision gets resisted; automation that removes typing does not.