Engineering, She Wrote
It’s not merely a matter of understanding complex technology; it’s also the ability to explain it. “Technical writers create documentation that focuses on informing and educating others,” said Technical Engineering Writer Miranda Harble. “That normally includes anything from writing instructions to best practices, and even proposals.”
There’s a common misconception that all technical writers do all day is sit at a desk and write manuals. In reality, Harble does a lot with both the mechanical and electrical departments. “I’m currently helping develop a lot of our process documentation—nailing down what we’re actually doing and what the steps are to do that,” she said.
Harble joined MPW in September of 2020 as a mechanical systems engineer. “I really enjoyed design engineering, but I saw a need in our department,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of documentation.” Harble said the shift to her becoming a tech writer began with working on a new hire guide. “I ran through that with six of our engineers,” she said. “I made a PowerPoint and trained them for a few days with it. It started with that.”
Around the same time, a process committee was created last year whose goal was to figure out what the design steps are, and the documentation needed to support them. “I contributed a lot to that, and I also created a lot of the documentation that was going with it,” Harble said. “I found I really enjoyed doing it.”
Harble is helping her readers stay safe. “Safety factors in more than you would think,” she said. “When I’m writing procedures, especially things for the O&M manuals, we’re talking about energy control, we’re talking about how to safely transfer chemicals, and stuff like that.”
Harble said her job as a writer is clearly to convey the absolute safest method. “I make sure that I understand how to do something safely so I can tell them what the safest way is to do it.” And she loves to explain it.
Harble’s father is an engineer who would take his young daughter to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) days at work. “I’d always liked math and science and I knew I wanted to do something with that, and I also love to challenge myself,” she said. “So, pursuing mechanical engineering, which is a fairly difficult discipline, is what I chose to do.”
Entering into a notoriously male-dominated field was also fun for Harble. There were times when she would be one of 10 women in a room full of 200 engineers. She is proud to work with three other women in the MPW engineering department; she was just one of two women in the department when she was hired.
When not working on documents and processes, Harble likes to talk about racing—her husband, Mitchell, races a winged sprint car. “So, most of my free time is helping him get the car ready, and I run all of our merchandising,” she said, including selling t-shirts at the races and maintaining their social media pages.
“With that, I also do live pit reporting, so I get online, and I live tweet the races for people who can’t make it there,” Harble said. “I love it!”