ABSTRACT
SITUATION BS Ltd had to submit a proposal for the supply of security equipment to NB plc, a group that operated office and warehouse facilities. In addition to the equipment itself, mainly surveillance cameras, the proposal had to cover installation, relocation, maintenance and consultancy on the appropriate type and location of equipment for any specified building. BS had two separate departments that supplied equipment and offered operational consultancy. The maintenance and installation services it provided via a subcontractor. The sales manager, Jimmy C, split the requirements document that came from NB into the three parts that related to these areas and passed them on to the relevant departments and the subcontractor. Jimmy intended to collate the three documents together, write a management summary, and build a price based upon the quotes from the departments/subcontractor.
PROBLEM When the individual sections came back to Jimmy it became horribly clear that they were not going to dovetail smoothly together. To start with each had used a different type font, size and margin settings. They had also used different headers and footers, numbering and heading styles. Visually the documents looked very different. There were also huge differences in writing styles. The subcontractor had taken a very friendly approach and had used you and we all over the place, and had adopted an eccentric numbering system. The two departmental contributions were more alike, but again very different writing styles had been used. In addition, one department had two levels of numbering, the other had five – what was a high-level heading in one document was a low-level one in the other.
