Industry standards

Now don't get me wrong - I think industry standards have their place. But I also think they are a crutch, something that people lean on even when they don't have a broken leg.

If a company doesn't have staff dedicated to document control, then they need to be applying industry standards to documentation, simply because they haven't got that much time to be worrying about it. But I, as a staff member who is dedicated to document control, I find people insisting mindlessly on applying industry standards to documentation is a pain in the butt.

Our latest Validations Manager keeps telling me about things that he's expecting to see in our documentation - things that I haven't put in because I think they are completely irrelevant to somebody who has two functioning brain cells to rub together. Like a table of contents.

Now, a table of contents is useful in some documents - all of our batch documents have them, as does our documentation for packaging. It would be impossible to find your way around the documents in question without them.

I do not believe, however, that a table of contents is necessary in a three page document which tells you how to clean and mop work areas. It's pointless. The document contains a simple set of instructions. It is not difficult to find your way around the document. You flip one page, and you have found the bit you need. You do not need a table of contents on such a document.

Some of our other documents may well get tables of contents next time they are reviewed. But not all of them. And our esteemed Validations Manager is going to have to stop carrying on about bloody industry standards in documentation if he wants me to cooperate. Honestly, he's like Darth Chaos was when she started here - always carrying on about how he can't cope with things because they aren't exactly the same as they were in his last place of employment. Am I going to have to go through this every single time we get more quality staff?