It's more than that on the DoD things I worked on. Not only did the flat washer's presence have to be documented, you had to have a complete explanation of what

It's more than that on the DoD things I worked on. Not only did the flat washer's presence have to be documented, you had to have a complete explanation of what standards and the supplier(s) for it. For a part like that, you can point to a document than someone has already produced that specifies the flat washer's properties. There was an occasion where a engineer had to draw up a specification for a post-it note because they were called for in a procedure that was supplied to the federal government.