QRA Corp., a Halifax startup that helps manufacturers detect design flaws in the development of complex machines, has launched a public beta-test for its latest product, QVScribe.

The product, which can be downloaded free during the beta-test, helps engineers understand the requirements listed in the documents they write when they are first proposing a piece of machinery.

QRA, which started as an industry-funded research project at Dalhousie University, has already developed QVTrace, which identifies design flaws in machinery while it is still in the design stage.

“The launch of QVScribe is important because it helps to diversify our product offering,” CEO and president Jordan Kyriakidis said in an interview Tuesday. “Our previous tool was deployed deep into the engineering process. This new tool is a bit more light-weight.”

QRA said in December that it had begun to provide Lockheed Martin engineers with the QVTrace to help with the development of increasingly complex cyber-physical designs. The product grew out of research that Kyriakidis and his team performed at Dalhousie University under a contract for Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defence contractor.

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Whereas the QVTrace product is an enterprise product sold to large corporations, QVScribe is a software-as- a-service product that any engineer can download and use to analyze requirements documents.

Kyriakidis said these documents comprise the first step of a major mechanical project, and if there is a mistake in them it could pose huge problems that crop up down the line. He added about half the problems that cost engineers time and money occur in this phase of the process. QVScribe uses Natural Language Processing to automatically detect problems in the written proposal, and helps the engineer to identify them.

“Since our early schooling, we are asked to be creative in our writing; engineering on the other hand requires us to be precise, concise and unambiguous,” defence engineering consultant Claude Lemelin said in a statement from QRA. “QVscribe shows a requirements document’s weaknesses, so they can be quickly corrected. It’s a simple tool for a complex problem that I think has the potential to be very helpful throughout the requirement engineering process.”

Kyriakidis said in the interview that his 15-person company took the new product through a closed alpha tests with about 15 to 20 organizations in late 2015. As a result, QRA has already received requests for additional features on QVScribe.

He said the length of the beta test would depend on the feedback the company receives. The product will be for sale after an official launch sometime in the near future.

QRA has raised funds investors, though the precise amount has never been made public. The company has received at least $1 million in equity investment from the provincial innovation agency, Innovacorp.

QRA says its mission is “to accelerate the design process and reduce costs across industries building the most complex, mission- and safety-critical systems – by building solutions that analyze system designs and requirements at all critical stages of development.”