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Well said and I agree totally. I was hired for a contract position as a
"Technical Writer" doing Analytical Chemistry Standard Operating
Procedures in preparation for ISO accreditation of a municpal water
treatment facility. The subject matter (obviously) was analytical
chemistry and I totally lacked any background in the area.
Had to do scads of research (on my own) and also had some super help from
someone on this list (who reccommended some super reading materials which
I purchased) in order to get up to speed. At the same time...there were
also many instances in which my "ignorance" of the subject matter & a lot
of just plain common sense proved to be very helpful. It was truly a
strange feeling.
Ultimately, the story had a happy ending and the ISO auditors gave the
SOP's a stellar review saying that they'd "never seen such good ones" . I
must tell you it was *quite* a struggle and quite a "learning" process on
the part of the entire team-to get there-largely due to the things you've
mentioned. They (the SME's) were actually (at least technically-pun
intended) were supposed to) author the documents while I -though hired as
a Tech Writer-in fact, ended up editing them and writing parts of them.
There was a *lot* of confusion about "roles" as a result of unclear job
descriptions/expectations and it took quite some time to sort it out. We
managed though. T'would have been nicer if it had been clear cut...but
next time...I'll be in a better position to ask the "right" questions at
the outset eh?
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