Can DITA support the documentation of safety procedures and guidelines for construction workers?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

DITA XML is well-suited for supporting the documentation of safety procedures and guidelines for construction workers, providing a structured and efficient approach to creating, managing, and delivering critical safety information on construction sites.

Topic-based Authoring

One of the key benefits of using DITA for safety documentation is topic-based authoring. Each safety procedure or guideline can be authored as a separate DITA topic. For instance, topics like “Fall Protection Guidelines” or “Hazardous Material Handling Procedures” can be created individually. This modular approach allows for easy content reuse, ensuring consistency across various documents and safety manuals.

Conditional Publishing

DITA enables conditional publishing, allowing content to be tailored to specific audiences or situations. Construction sites may involve various types of equipment, materials, and safety requirements. With DITA, it’s possible to include or exclude content based on specific conditions. For example, safety guidelines for working with heavy machinery can be automatically included only when relevant to a particular construction project.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA supports the documentation of safety procedures with conditional publishing:


<topic id="fall-protection-guidelines">
  <title>Fall Protection Guidelines</title>
  <body>
    <section id="general-guidelines">
      <title>General Fall Protection Guidelines</title>
      <p>...

    </section>
    <section id="equipment-specific">
      <title>Fall Protection for Equipment Operators</title>
      <p>...

      <conkeyref conref="equipment-specific-safety.dita" props="equipment-type=heavy-machinery" />
    </section>
  </body>

In this example, the topic “Fall Protection Guidelines” includes both general and equipment-specific guidelines, with conditional content based on the equipment type.