Halifax-based QRA Corp., which helps manufacturers eliminate design flaws early in the development process, has launched a new tool to ensure everyone working on a project can understand the written requirements.

After a successful beta program, QVscribe is now available to defense, aerospace, and automotive industries customers looking to improve their requirements documents. If left untouched, sloppy language in requirements could result in significant re-work in both the design and build phases. 

Growing out of a research project at Dalhousie University, QRA has developed technology that helps large manufacturers identify flaws in complicated machinery early in the design stage. The idea is to work out the kinks before the manufacturer spends millions of dollars prototyping a machine that has ill-matched components.

“Because of the subjectivity of language, often what’s clear to one person is misunderstood by another,” said QRA Chief Executive and President Jordan Kyriakidis in a statement. “As easy as Spell Check, QVscribe flags potential errors right in Microsoft Word, allowing users to immediately fix ambiguities long before they cause problems. It’s a fast, seamless and easy-to-use solution that enables more people to contribute to the requirements process in far more productive ways.”

Powered by Natural Language Processing, QVscribe corrects problems with syntax using a visual grading system. This enables virtually anyone to use the QVscribe analysis directly within familiar Microsoft Office and Visure files to contribute to the consistency and quality that is paramount in an effective requirements program. 

According to recent studies, more than half of all engineering errors originate in the requirements stage, and the cost of fixing those errors in systems and software increases exponentially over the project life cycle.

“Erroneous requirements contribute to 70 percent of the errors found during a system development project in the aerospace industry today,” said Yogananda Jeppu, Principal Systems Engineer at Honeywell Technology Solutions. “Correct requirements are the need of the hour. QVscribe is an automated way of analyzing requirements for correctness. The quality metrics based on a user-defined library of words brings an early detection of errors which can improve quality upfront. QVscribe has an easy to use interface and automation that makes it a very handy tool for the engineer.”

Last October, QRA was named to the first cohort of the Lazaridis Institute Canadian Scale-Up Program, which will help promising Canadian startups to go through their growth stage. Named for BlackBerry Co-Founder Mike Lazaridis, the institute at Wilfrid Laurier University set up the program to help 10 companies from across the country to extend their sales to the global market. QRA is the only company from outside Ontario or Quebec selected for the program.