Everything that reaches the shop reaches it through one address: [email protected]. A question about how a harness is built, a drawing set with a request for a shop pack, a note from someone who wants to work at the bench, a supplier asking about a part we specify. It all comes in through the same door, it is read by the people who do the work, and it is answered by the person who can answer it. A build is run by one person from takeoff to pack, and you are given their name when the scope is agreed.
What to put in the first message
A first message that carries four things gets a useful answer. A first message that carries none of them gets four questions back, and the answer arrives a round later than it needed to.
- The machine or the plant. What it is, what it does when it is working, and what the harness is for on it. The work decides what the loom has to survive, and that decides the joints before it decides the wire.
- The set. The electrical drawing set or the interface specification, at its stated revision, attached rather than described. A set is a thing we can read and take off; a description is a thing we can only ask about. If you have neither yet, say so. We build to an issued set, and the useful conversation is about what yours has to contain.
- Where the assembly will be installed. A harness in a payload bay, a loom behind a removable operator and a package for a plant with no one on site are built to different rules, and the place decides which rules govern and who inspects.
- What you need back. A matched set, a full shop pack, a landed package, or a read of a set you already hold. Say which, and say when you need it and what that date is tied to.
The reply will carry questions before it carries anything else, because a set that leaves nothing open is rare. Answer them and the next reply is a scope. The first message opens the work; it does not finish it. How to engage describes what follows, and enquiries sets out in full what an enquiry about a harness has to carry and why each part matters to the answer.
Where we are
The shop is in Alberta. It is a working floor, with formboards laid out, a cutting station and a test station, and it is not arranged for visitors who arrive unannounced. Visits are by arrangement. Write first, say what you want to see and why, and we will set a time. If what you want to see is how a board is laid out or how a record is kept, say that, because those are the two things worth the drive.
A value nobody measured never reaches a wire.
Which door
Each door goes somewhere different, and a message gets to the right person faster when it comes through the right one.
- A set. If you hold a drawing set or an interface specification and you want a harness built to it, go to enquiries. That page says what an enquiry needs to contain and what happens after we read it, and it ends in a form that composes the email in your own mail application. You attach the set to that email.
- Work. If you want to work here, go to careers. It describes the work at the bench, at the board and at the test station, the habits the shop asks for, and what to put in the message.
- Everything else. A question about how we build, a supplier question, a correction to a page here, or a request to visit, goes to the address above.
What we refuse
We do not quote from a description. A description is a sentence about a harness, and a harness is not built from a sentence. It is built from a drawing that somebody has signed, and a price is a statement about that drawing at that revision. Send the set and we will quote against a shop drawing drawn from it. Send a description and we will send questions.
We do not answer a question about a test value with a number. What a test proves we will describe at length: a continuity check proves that every conductor arrives where its identity says it should, and an isolation test asks whether two circuits that must never meet are in fact separate. What a test is set to is stated on a specific assembly by the engineer responsible for it, against that assembly's own specification, and nowhere else. A value nobody measured never reaches a wire, and it does not reach an email either.
