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Your technical documentation solution.
Instruction manuals and guides. Any size project. Authoring, design, management, translation and delivery.
We know what we're doing
We excel at collecting and understanding technical information and formulating it into clear, easy to understand instructions.
Our documentation cover all areas from installation, operation, maintenance through to troubleshooting and spare parts. Written to applicable standards such as CE, UKCA, BSRIA, BREEAM and ISO standards.
Focus on your business
Our expertise will enable you to focus on your core business while providing quality, professional technical documentation to your end-user, complementing your own service and enhancing your overall delivery package.
Building handover packs
For help with Building OM manuals and project handover documentation please refer to the Project documentation page or contact us for more details.
Next step
Simply use the Contact us form below with your requirement or any questions.
We look forward to hearing from you about your documentation needs.
Our technical writing services
- Instructions and user guides
- New documents, updates or development, translations
- Proofreading, SOPs, procedural documentation
- Building handover documents including homeowner guides
- Written to applicable standards, and designed to your company branding or style guide
- Projects of any size
- After-sales update service to keep documents accurate
- Sub-contract technical writer sourcing
Typical documentation
Product documentation
Manufacturing – Consumer – Software…
Clearly written documentation to enhance your customer’s experience of your product, allowing them to use all features as you intended. Help your customer find the right information easily and quickly, eliminating the frustration that can be caused by a confusing user manual.
You have created a great product, we will make sure your customer has an experience to match.
Project documentation
Building – Infrastructure – Engineering…
Installation, operation and maintenance manuals for construction and engineering projects are often complex documents. We collect the different sources of information across the whole project. Organise it into a cohesive user manual introducing clear structure and navigation. Ensuring information can be easily and quickly found.
Provide everything your end-user needs at handover to operate, maintain and troubleshoot all parts of your project.
How your customer benefits
Here’s a few ways our documentation benefits your customer:
- Install and set-up your product correctly first time
- Use your product quickly
- Fully utilise all features of your product
- Likely to use your product more often
- Troubleshoot issues independently
How your company benefits
Here’s a few ways our documentation benefits your company:
- Prevent product damage or personal injury, due to misuse, incorrect installation or maintenance
- Your customer is likely to become brand loyal and recommend your product
- Reduction in customer service calls
- Reduction in warranty claims
- Increase your add-on sales of ancillary products like spare parts and accessories
Why you need AST Authors...
Infrastructure Projects
Infrastructure Projects
- Large projects require many specialist teams of experts to deliver successfully.
- They are too complex for any team to ‘have a go’ at any element outside their core competence.
- We are used to managing large volumes of information from multiple sources and of varying type and complexity.
- AST Authors are used to delivering documentation on projects with multiple stakeholders, working with multiple engineering teams sometimes spread over many locations.
- We will explore methods for improving the gathering, organising and processing of information, to streamline the process and maintain consistency.
- We can work with contractors to offer competitive tender pricing to help them win work.
Existing Manual Redevelopment
Existing Manual Redevelopment
- Existing manuals can be improved further to match your customer expectations by incorporating customer feedback.
- Manuals become dated over time and fall behind product developments.
- International standards change and manuals need to change with them to achieve product certification.
- A common improvement to usability is to produce a subset from existing manuals. Making a more practical concise, quick reference alternative to the full manual.
- Re-positioning a manual for translation by reducing word count to reduce translation cost.
- Environmental focus may drive redevelopment to transition manuals online, reducing the reliance on paper use.
- You may wish to convert legacy manuals to online versions to improve access and navigation.
Outgrowing DIY manuals
Outgrowing DIY manuals
- Successful companies eventually outgrow in-house generated manuals.
- As sales grow, product portfolios diversify, documentation volume becomes too great for staff to maintain.
- In-house staff become too busy with their main duties.
- Successful companies naturally desire more professional technical publications.
- Products become more technologically advanced, more feature rich, adding a new level of sophistication and complexity that increasingly becomes more difficult to document.
- Skilled professional authors are required to break down the features into processes in a clear, logical structured way.
- Customers need to be able to use all of the available features and maintain the product safely.
No documentation
No documentation
- Early stage companies often provide little or no end user documentation with their products.
- Can you be sure your customer is using your product properly?
- Is your customer getting the most out of your product?
- Is your customer maintaining your product correctly?
- Professional documentation will add to the usability of your product.
- Absence of a user manual could be costing you repeat purchases and lost customer recommendations.
- All products are an investment, from development to launch, marketing to achieving sales. Professional documentation is the final investment adding the finishing touch complimenting your product.
Professional technical authoring will enhance your documentation with
- Consistency throughout
- Clear useable navigation
- Correct user manual structure
- Language tailored to the end-user
- Information and data correctly grouped by type and systemically organised
- Written using instructional language and use of 'plain English'
- Synergy across all documentation and company branding
Professional technical authoring will bring the following improvements
- Speed of access to information
- Logical and smooth flow
- Easier understanding of instructions
- Greater documentation usefulness
- Increased ability for customer to self-help
- Enhance your professional reputation
Sub-contract technical writers
AST Authors can provide sub-contract technical writers. From our pool of in-house staff and our sub-contractor network we can source the skills required.
- We retain a database of Technical Authors and technical workers in readiness for a requirement.
- Each sub-contractor is reviewed prior to entry in to our network.
- We will understand your requirement and vet suitable workers. Before putting forward the particulars of the most suitable options to ensure that:
- only suitable workers will be proposed;
- your time is used efficiently.
For your peace of mind we vet our independent contractors for right to work, insurance and legislative policy checks, and will work with you through the Deemed Employment path following the correct process and putting in place the correct solution, even pay-rolling contractors directly if necessary.
Contact us today
Use our quick and easy enquiry form below for an informal appraisal