I work for a construction company and we are about to begin the process of redoing our process manuals.

When we initially engaged in this project 4 years ago, we developed a "Blue Print" manual that gets distributed to all employees. This manual is meant to be a reference guide to help increase the quality and efficiency of daily tasks, as well as a “rule book” to help employees’ complete unfamiliar or difficult procedures. It is organized according to the phases of a construction project. We also distribute position specific manuals for certain roles, such as Project Managers and Administrative Assistants. Employees are told to refer to Blue Print manual first then their role manual for more specific instructions that relate to role-based daily tasks.

The reason we organized our manuals in this way was because we thought we wanted to become ISO certified.

All manuals are in hard copy format that get distributed to employees. An electronic version is also stored on our company Intranet.

We just implemented a new ERP system and some of the processes have changed. It is time to redo our manuals once again.

Based on your experience and design/methodology of manual design, I am curious if you think we should consider role-based manuals for employees or create 1-operations manual that would be accessible to all employees and communicate which sections pertain to various roles?