How to Write an Effective Inspection Report?

There is a good old saying “Your job is not completed until the paperwork is finished”, is very much true. In today’s world, the documentation is necessary. If the documents and audit reports are written with the same problem, there are various other problems as well. All these problems are most likely associated with assignments, priorities, completion dates, and priorities.

For instance, a report about weekly pest management service may document the same conditions for months, annual third-party audit reports will show the same problem over and over again. Product safety problems and repetitive quality assurance many times lead to frustration and worse yet, to willful negligence.

Moreover, a well-written inspection report will lead to finish the job quickly. In this post, we will discuss what are the best ways to write an effective inspection report. Here the five important steps for it:

Know Your Audience

All the relevant information is shown to only a particular audience. One should recognize the difference between internal, external, confidential reports, and executive.

• Creating new executive reports usually requires brevity

• Internal reports are designed to remain with the company, but this can create a false sense of security, as most of these reports don’t stay internal

• A confidential report is another kind of false sense of security as most of these reports do not remain confidential

• External reports also include service providers, customers, suppliers, regulators, and other businesses outside
Most of the reports are sent via an Email and all of them should be considered as permanent and external. Make sure that everyone understands the truth of the good old saying “Once on the internet always on the internet”. Read your entire report from the purpose of your audience. Will they able to understand the wordings? What actions are needed for them? Are they able to get your message?

Good Writing Tips

A well-written inspection report follows the same characteristics as describing important facts. For instance, “observed trails of insect in 20 pounds of floor approximately on the floor under a leaking shifter pipe”. Also, this description “Observed a lot of flour on the floor” is better. Other tips you should follow is to create short sentences, write the report with clarity, avoid using acronyms, sending short messages with the first sentence of each paragraph, and much more. Another important thing is to identify the good with the bad. Many third party audit companyand third party inspection services reports do not show the best practices followed by the industries.

Formal Reports Require Formal Responses

Responses to the report should be done within one or two weeks, or even a month, based on the nature of the report. May responses should result in a follow-up meeting showing what has been done if it could be done when it will be done and by whom. In order to manage the follow-up activity, you should consider using the original report with two blank columns on the right side, having titles “Completed on” and “assigned to”. A well-written inspection report, formatted for a particular action, is showing action in one place.

Follow Up Process

Even though there are different approaches in the existence, follow-up is the basic and fundamental to take a correct action. Most of the companies can easily identify their priorities and find out all the assignments, accountability, and all the target dates by extracting the information from the report. Moreover, if the report is written well-structured format, one can simply utilize the report as a management tool for any follow-up activity. Discussion with responsible allows staff to understand issues and create the best solutions for it. Documenting dates and actions on one inspection report is the best way to avoid repeated problems.

Conclusion

Writing a new inspection report is not an easy task. However, creating good reports is very simple. Many effective reports are factual, well-structured, and concise. After the report is created you should send it to the readers to find out if the report is well-structured, concise and factual. When inspection reports are shorter, it means something is working well. Therefore, before creating the final well-structured inspection report you should know your audience, understanding the purpose of the report, and should know how the report is used by the users. All these things will help you in writing effective inspection report.