How we Work

We concentrate on producing quality work for reasonable prices.

Rather than using expensive, glossy sales brochures and web sites full of sales jargon to promote our services, we try to inform customers in a clear and concise manner. We are able to do this because we were all trained as engineers and worked for several years in industry as design and production engineers before moving into CAE software development.

When quoting for a project we detail how the proposed solution will work and both the advantages and disadvantages with respect to the customer's particular requirements. We try to avoid overselling the benefits and concentrate on setting the customer's expectations at a realistic level. In this way when a project matches or exceeds the customer's expectations, it will be judged a success and be more pleasurable for all concerned. Moreover satisfied customers may ask us to do further work or recommend us to other companies!

Complex software is never perfect. Testing is one crucial means of ensuring fewer errors with less-significant effects. Moreover the actual process of defining a wide range of appropriate and realistic test cases, often helps specify the requirements for a project. When a customer is able to define test cases, we are happy to guarantee that our software will produce the correct results in these cases.

All our software is purpose-written for individual customers. We do not sell off-the-shelf, packaged software solutions. The applications outlined on this web site are simply examples of our work to illustrate the scope of our skills and expertise. In all cases, rights to the software belong to the customer or jointly with ourselves.

We normally provide full software source code to the customer. This enables our customers to extend or maintain the software should they so wish. However, we supply our software on the understanding that the customer will not disclose the source code to any other firm or company unless otherwise agreed in writing. Moreover the computer programming tools, skills, routines and libraries we employ to develop software for our customers remains the sole property of ADE Ltd and shall not be made available for use by any other person or company.

A clearly written specification of the requirements that is understandable to the end-user is essential. Sometimes writing the specification forms a separate, chargeable project which may include creating prototype programs to demonstrate key features of the proposed solution. We base our time and cost estimates on the requirements specification. In most cases we sub-divide projects into phases that can be managed more easily and, if the customer wishes, can be ordered separately as a means of reducing risk.

Many projects require a significant amount of work to set-up databases, graphics, standard drawing templates, parametric 3D model definitions, etc. Normally we set up the necessary structures and some sample data that is adequate to test and demonstrate the software. The remaining data is then entered by the customer as this is normally the most effective way of working and of utilising our different skills.

We are happy to provide on-going support and to add extra features to the software we develop for our customers. ADE is a stable company, established in 1978, and as a small company we are normally able to respond to customer requests much more quickly than most larger companies can manage. Moreover being small and stable has helped us develop close and long term relationships with our customers. The vast majority of our work is repeat business from existing customers.