Welcome to Bowdawn Limited

My name is Richard Lane and I have owned and operated Bowdawn for the last 26 years. I am a technical author producing technical documents across a wide spectrum of engineering and business activities.

The two sentences you’ve just read are accurate, and should give you enough information to decide whether to read on or find another website. I wrote them as I did because I know I have five to 10 seconds to tell you enough to decide that reading further is worthwhile. I understand that the information has to be put across quickly and to the point.

That’s the business I’m in. What technical authors do is take information from one environment and make it available for use in another. This can be:

• Design information used to produce maintenance procedures, the traditional way we make a living (if a word like “tradition” can be used here)
• Taking business needs and making administrative procedures available to suit them
• Taking technical information to make training material
• Producing reports from supplied basic information
• Documenting change
• Producing decision-support material
• Pretty much any combination of the above, provided we get the right support and information.
• Technical copywriting.

We can also take information from one expert for transmission to another. This is unusual, but becoming more common as demands on expert’s time increase.

There you have it. That’s what I do, and have been doing for the last quarter of a century.
It isn’t as simple as that, of course. If it was, there would be no need for this website. There’s a whole industry involved in those few paragraphs you just read. What technical authors can do for customers is:

1. Free up engineers, technicians and managers for their main work.
2. Reduce your customer support costs by reducing the number of customer support phone calls you get.
3. Enhance your product image by making your products easier to use and maintain.
4. Enable compliance with European, American and British standards (more of that later).
5. Provide reassurance to regulators and stakeholders that documentation issues are being appropriately managed and professionally addressed.

Bowdawn has provided technical authoring services across multiple technologies (ranging from nuclear processes to children’s nursery procedures) and has worked with some of the biggest enterprises in the world.

If you think you may be able use this fund of expertise and experience, please look at the rest of our site. If you like what you see, please contact me.