Quick Start Briefs
Entry-level briefs for anyone starting a change, and no homework. The Ten Stages overview walks through the Database's lifecycle from Diagnose to Adapt, with a brief for each stage; topic briefs follow one idea across departments, newest first. Every claim ties to an entry in the Database.
The ten stages
The Ten Stages: How a Change Actually Lands
Why a change is a cycle, not an event: what each stage is for, what it hands the next, where changes usually break, and how to size the effort. All ten stage briefs open from here.
- 1Diagnose
- 2Define
- 3Prepare
- 4Learn
- 5Apply
- 6Verify
- 7Adopt
- 8Support
- 9Measure
- 10Adapt
Topic briefs
The Practice of One: Best Practices for a Solo Firm
For the engineer who is also the project manager and the office: a few procedures, a contractor system, hold points where work gets covered up, and a learning plan you'll keep.
Learning · Change · Projects · Software · AIFolklore Field Guide: 40 Numbers to Stop Quoting
The famous statistics that didn't survive a trip to the source, what each one actually rests on, what to say instead, and five questions to check a number yourself.
Technology · AI · Knowledge · LegalBefore You Switch On the AI Assistant
A pre-launch checklist: governed sources, a gold-set test, citations and "not found", permissions and leakage, client contracts, and logs handled as people data.
Technology · Plants · Utilities · ProjectsGo-Live Without the Hangover
Readiness you test rather than survey, a contingency for the system that runs wrong, five ticket classes, and a hypercare that ends on data instead of a date.
Safety · Projects · Cyber · Contracts · PlantsAvoiding Risk
Risk is mostly decided before anything goes wrong: base rates, controls where mistakes can't be undone, a way back, signals worth watching, and how to decide when it happens anyway.
All topic briefsMore briefs
- 30-60-90 Roadmaps
- Project Management for AEC
- Strategic Learning
- The Complete Onboarding Guide
How to use these guides
Each guide is written to be read in one sitting and used for months. The small codes after a paragraph, like CM-RSK-02, are Database entries: open one to see the sources, how strong the evidence is, and what we're not sure about. Where a guide says "practise it", the scenario named puts the same decision in front of you under pressure.
The guides are general guidance for professional teams, not legal, engineering or safety advice. Where a rule depends on your jurisdiction or contract, the guide says so.