How We Research and Review

"Reviewed" is a word that gets used loosely. Here is what it means on this site.

Primary sources first

A regulatory guide starts with the current directive, read in full rather than summarised from elsewhere. We do not build a guide from other websites' descriptions of a directive, because errors in this area propagate quickly and confidently.

Field verification

A requirement on paper and a practice in the field are different things, and both matter. Regulatory guides get checked against operational experience: does this actually happen this way, and if not, what is the gap? Where the answer is that practice varies, the guide says so instead of presenting one approach as standard.

Two editors

Every guide is read by both authors before publication, each looking for the other's characteristic error. The field author over-describes what operators do; the regulatory author under-describes how messy the field is. Reading each other's work catches both.

The review cycle

Regulatory guides are re-checked against current directives on a scheduled basis, and out of cycle whenever the AER issues a relevant revision or bulletin. Field guides are reviewed when practice changes or when a reader tells us something no longer matches what they see.

When a review changes nothing, we still move the reviewed date, because "checked and still current" is useful information about a regulatory page.

What sends a guide back

• A requirement stated without naming its source.
• A practice described in language that implies it is mandatory.
• A number, threshold or interval quoted from memory rather than from the directive.
• Anything that reads as advice for a specific situation.
• A claim about the industry that neither of us can support.

What we do not do

We do not test equipment, audit facilities, or rate operators. We are a reference publication with two writers, and pretending to a capability we do not have would be worse than saying plainly what we are.