Industrial Procedure Writing

Increasingly, corporate policies – like regulatory agencies -- are demanding that approved procedures be in place before a valve is opened or a compressor started at any given site. Operating with limited resources in today’s economy, companies face challenges in producing quality procedures on time and on budget. The Industrial Procedure Writing course provides tools that can help operations to meet these challenges.  

The objective of this course is to provide guidance to both field and office personnel who are tasked with designing and writing field procedures. Steps, reflecting the actions required to complete tasks, are the core of a procedure. Complete, accurate, clear, and brief steps that are easy to follow and safe to use are essential features of well-constructed procedures. Accordingly, this course concentrates on the design, sequencing, and writing of procedural steps. 

The course includes section reviews, quizzes, and a workbook in which the students have the opportunity to assess and rewrite problematic procedure content, using the structures and techniques explained in the course. 

While the Oil and Gas sector is the frame of reference for this course, the principles of the course can be applied to industrial operations in general. 

A complete set of course materials is included in the Industrial Procedure Writing course.

Those who would benefit from this course include:

Technical Writers
Lead Operators
Field Operators
Engineers
Technical staff

The objective of this course is to provide guidance to both field and office personnel who are tasked with designing and writing field procedures.

Patrick Cowan, BA

Patrick has provided technical communications services for over 30 years to corporate clients in Calgary and the surrounding area. He has written industrial procedures and software documentation in the Oil & Gas, Mining, Utilities, and Telecommunications sectors. His long experience in this work has given him a deep understanding of the challenges of technical communication, from two key perspectives: that of the Writer, and that of the Field Operator or software End User.

Over the past decade, Patrick’s focus has been on commissioning and operations procedures for processing plants and oilfield facilities. Soon after commencing this work, he recognized that Field Operators have limited time for reading and interpreting procedures while performing tasks. Overcoming this obstacle is key to making field procedures easy to follow, while at the same time complete, accurate, and safe to use. Patrick’s methods and techniques for meeting these hard-to-reconcile objectives have been integrated into the Industrial Procedure Writing course.
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COURSE INFORMATION