Meet Spec Sheet Stu 😎

Feeling like I'm starting to get the hang of this ICM process. This framework is "Spec Sheet Stu" who I created to help kickoff projects within our business. Stu is not automating anyone's current work he is making possible something that simply wasn't before. I've included the file breakdown below if anyone wanted to pick it apart and give me pointers.

I work in design, manufacturing, and installation of turnkey automation equipment for manufacturers. It has always been a pain point in our business transferring knowledge from the principal engineers in sales to the execution team designing and manufacturing the systems against booked work. The senior engineers have a vision when they quote and price work and it takes many hours of meetings and constant feedback loops to arrive at a completed design with the engineering team after all the knowledge has been transferred. Stu is the middle man.

He first takes in all documentation from the sales team. He then works through a 5 phase process with the senior engineers gathering all the information he needs to generate four documents. These documents create a full picture of what is determined up front and what is left to figure out. He sorts out all ambiguity between contracts and scope documents and leaves you with a clear “this is what we know” and “this is what we need to figure out still”. This saves days of work for the sales team in generating kickoff documentation and the result on the other side far exceeds what was possible before.

Once the documentation is set, Stu then becomes an advisor on project scope and can answer any questions as a first line of defense before having to go back to the sales team.

There are myriad benefits to this. Less back and forth between the senior and project engineers, reduced project hours, less roadblocks, more up front flagging of contract conflicts, the list goes on. These are the kinds of things I think are the most amazing about this technology. Automation of repetitive work is nice but we can do things that wouldn't have been possible without teams of people that would've made the work unsustainable.

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