Our Clients in the Government

City of Calgary – Water Services Division

The City of Calgary needed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) developed for the operations and maintenance processes within their Water Services Division.

About the Work Required

Required detailed business analysis of the documentation requirements for City of Calgary’s FOUR Water Services Divisions:

• Water Treatment
• Wastewater Treatment
• Field Services
• Construction Services

Each division is equivalent to a separate corporate entity. Specifically, they needed to identify ALL the SOPS that must be written in order to support training, orderly transfer of information, and maintenance of the water services for the City of Calgary. They wanted to ensure that all critical information currently stored in the minds of retiring technical experts was captured, preserved, and communicated to the next generation of employees and management.

Project Deliverables

We assisted them by developing and delivering the following:

• Conducted extensive worksessions and brainstorming sessions with technical experts to capture and identify all critical operational processes.
• Analyzed all results and produced detailed business process flow charts showing task relationships and task dependencies.
• Analyzed all results and developed detailed, task-oriented Tables of Contents for SOP delivery. These TOCs are being used to develop and write all SOPS for these departments.
• Developed standardized Framemaker templates for each department with an emphasis on consistency, style, re-usability, and ability to single-source this new content into multiple presentation medias in the future (hardcopy, html, online help, etc).
• Began the process of writing the most critical SOPS for Wastewater Treatment using the templates and styles developed during the Design and Analysis phases.

Tools Used: Microsoft Word, Visio, Adobe Fireworks, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Framemaker, RoboHelp.

Date: May 2009 – July 2010

Location: Calgary, Alberta

National Energy Board – Regulatory Services

NEB -National Energy Board required a complete reorganization and restructuring of the business processes under the control of the Secretary of the Board. We accomplished this by:

• Developing process documentation for the Quality Management System (QMS) for Regulatory Services Team and the Executive Office Team.
• Conducting workshops to clearly define processes, and role-based organization and flow of information. This resulted in a complete re-organization of their processes, reducing an initial 5 business process methodology to a clearer 3-process structure.
• Developing a clear outline of required information.
• Planning the organization, structure, and presentation of documentation for all defined processes. Developing standardized WORD templates for diagrams, overview, and process related tasks. Recommending improvements for clarity, ease-of-use, and usefulness.
• Collaborating with NEB technical staff in collecting, reviewing, editing, analyzing, and signing off new process documentation. This included process overviews, task-based procedures, checklists, forms, and role-based lane diagrams detailing information flow across the NEB.
• Uploading, testing, and implementing all documents within their RDIMS (document management system) and Dashboard interfaces.
• Developing process for Board Member Optional Training, and wrote all supporting procedures and documents.

Tools Used: Microsoft Word, Visio, Adobe Fireworks, Microsoft Excel, Hummingbird RDIMS, Dashboard.

Date: 2008 – 2010, 2012

Location: Calgary, Alberta

Alberta Government – Manufacturing Department

Rowan Tree Books was contracted by the Government of Alberta to develop a website that provides Manufacturing information to a variety of related businesses within Alberta and abroad as part of Alberta’s ongoing endeavour to promote our province to the rest of the business world. We did this by:

• Conducting business process workshops with government employees to identify key items requiring documentation and presentation.
• Developing web page structure, organization, navigation, and table of contents.
• Managing, coordinating, and organizing a team of writers through the development, research, analysis, and production phases of this project.
• Researching, developing, and writing all required content for Lean Manufacturing. Following strict business processes for review and edit management. See LEAN Manufacturing (http://www.alberta-canada.com/manufacturing/buildLean/) for more information.
• Producing all content within very tight timeline.

Tools Used: Microsoft Word, Visio, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Microsoft Excel.

Date: 2006

Location: Edmonton, Alberta

National Energy Board – Case Management System

The NEB required an online help system for their Case Management System. We assisted them by:

• Developing a very well-received online, web-based help system for the Case Management System (CMS) using Robohelp, complete with detailed graphics, screenshots, navigation, index, and glossary. Integrating a logical structure and naming syntax for topic types based on procedures, general information, process flows, etc.
• Conducting worksessions to determine training requirements for CMS and NHFAA (Non Hearing Facilities Application).
• Developing detailed course outline and generated supporting training material for the Case Management System (CMS).Researching, conducting worksessions, and developing business process flows detailing the business activities that take place for NHFAA. These process flows were used to develop training outlines and content, as well as serving as the table of contents for the new online help.
• Working with developers to test application, and identify bugs to be resolved before product release.

Tools Used: Microsoft Office, Microsoft Powerpoint, Visio, Robohelp.

Date: 2004 – 2005

Location: Calgary, Alberta

City of Calgary – Waterworks

The City of Calgary required Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for use in training for the Utilities and Environmental Protection Group as well as documents for the Waterworks department including SOPs for the Waterworks Feedermains System.

About the Work Required

The City of Calgary – Water Services group required detailed business analysis of the documentation requirements for Calgary’s FOUR Water Services Divisions:

• Water Treatment
• Wastewater Treatment
• Field Services
• Construction Services

Each division is equivalent to a separate corporate entity. Specifically, they needed to identify ALL the SOPS that must be written in order to support training, orderly transfer of information, and maintenance of the water services for the City of Calgary. Their goal was to ensure that all critical information currently stored in the minds of retiring technical experts was captured, preserved, and communicated to the next generation of employees and management.

Project Deliverables

We successfully completed this large project by:

• Planning, developing, and carrying out a series of interactive workshops to collect and document the standard operating procedures for the Utilities and Environmental Protection group. These were created in the form of small, pocket sized notebooks for use in training and daily use.
• Planning, designing, and writing the Parts and Specialty Items Guide for Calgary Waterworks. This book was well-received by many departments and has become a model for further development.
• Planning, developing, designing, and executing several concurrent projects for Y2K Contingency Planning, Y2K SOPs, Transmission and Distribution SOPS, and a Pilot Project for the Waterworks Feedermains system.
• Managing a team of writers to ensure all deliverables were on time, complete, and approved.
• Ensuring that we delivered the promised “one brain” look for all documentation.

Tools Used: Microsoft Word, Adobe Framemaker, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Pagemill, Adobe ImageStyler, Adobe Acrobat, Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Date: 1999 – 2001

Location: Calgary, Alberta