BvS10 Viking Technical Documentation

Operating in austere environments

BvS10 Viking is a dual body, amphibious vehicle designed to provide mobility in the harshest of environments where other vehicles cannot.

Although the vehicle was able to go wherever needed, the interactive yet IT-intensive technical documentation associated with it proved to be less adaptable. The UK Forces needed documentation that was accessible and easy to adhere to, even when communications networks and power were scarce.

The decision was made to convert the interactive documents into Army Engineering Support Publications (AESP). A more standard version of technical documentation, the AESPs could be relied upon to be available, whatever the environment.

Breaking it down

BAE Systems Hägglunds tasked CDS DS with the conversion and rationalisation of six independent Commercial Off the Shelf manuals into a single multi-variant AESP suite.

We did this with a blended approach; utilising both a bespoke in-house software solution and drawing on the experience and expertise of our team. This approach proved successful as it eradicated the errors inherent with a strictly software solution by including the oversight of a technical author. Our authors are first and foremost engineers, but they also understood the military environment in which the vehicle was being asked to operate; this understanding is something that software will never be able to fully replicate.

First, the software converted thousands of source data files into a format that would suit the AESP suite. Illustration files were also converted and automatically inserted as part of the conversion process. This was a quick process, but more care did have to be taken in the design of the software for this project to ensure the original Swedish data module tags were replicated correctly.