I was on the supplier side for this fleet. Now I work for the operator of the same fleet, and the documents we delivered don’t have what I need.
Back then, there was one number I checked every day. How many documents had been submitted, and how many had been approved. Almost all of them were design documents.
Does this train perform the way it should? Has that been proven? Explaining it and proving it was the job. And the clock was always ticking.
The operation and maintenance documentation was a contract milestone too. A huge volume of it. There was a separate team just for that. You submit, comments come back. You fix them, more comments come back. A few revisions were normal. Honestly, as an engineer, I didn’t care much about those. I was busy. I doubt anyone else on the engineering side was different. Why else would there be a separate team just for that?
When I became a PM? Same. By the time those documents are due, trains are being delivered, and that’s when the problems peak. Who has time to look at manuals then?
Now I’m the one reading them, and I need them to tell me something.
Take a simple one. A rubber seal has worn out. Buy a new one, replace it. Easy. I check the as-built drawing. No dimensions. No material. I check the technical description. It describes things, just not the things I need. I check the manual. It says to replace the seal.
Ha.
I came from the supplier. My old company built this fleet, and I ran the warranty on the newest cars before handing them over. I know how that document set is structured, and I’m fairly sure the answer is somewhere in the design documents. But those aren’t here.
I don’t think anyone lost them. For ten years, nobody needed them. While the trains run well, those documents sleep in a drawer. They wake up at overhaul, or when something goes wrong and you need a limit to work to. That’s ten or fifteen years in. By then, even the supplier may not have them.
The people who were in the room during design usually weren’t from the operator. Different views, different priorities. Like I said, I didn’t care much either.
I regret that a little now. I didn’t know it would turn out like this.
If you’re on a project team submitting those documents right now, someone will come looking for them in ten years. Probably someone like me. And if you’re on the operations side while the project is still running, ask the supplier for everything you can get. Even what you don’t think you need today. Ten years from now, it might be the one page someone is looking for.