What is an Inspection Report | Definition and Meaning

What is an Inspection Report | Definition and Meaning

The inspection report is a written statement or document prepared by a licensed inspection professional. This report summarizes information about the condition of someone's property, life, health, and so on. The main purpose of writing an inspection report is to correctly communicate and document the findings of an inspection. In some cases, inspection reports are lengthy and detailed and run to many pages. In other cases, they are short enough as they do not include notations found in a file document, fee information, company status, or other pieces of information that are less important. In brief, the inspection report is a document or documents containing the inspection related information produced or generated by an inspection professional. It is unfortunate but true that there are commonalities for writing a good inspection report around the world including the USA.

As the procedure of inspection report writing is highly complicated, proper guidance and training is essential for the inspectors. This observation is based on some incomplete inspection reports found during their evaluation by some inspection report writing specialists in the USA. So, the utmost effort should be made to uniquely tailor an inspection report with relevant information to meet the needs of the authority concerned. While writing inspection reports, some basic requirements should be followed strictly so that they can gain expected standard and acceptability of the concerned authorities. These basic requirements can be maintained by both statute and good inspection practices. It is important for all inspectors to make sure that the basic requirements and essential elements related to inspection reports are being included in all inspection reports.

The inspection professionals should also pay much attention to structure the formats of their reports. It should be done in such a way that presents clear and objective inspection protocols. Since common sense and professional judgment are two most important elements in writing good inspection reports, all inspection professionals should be aware of these two facts while presenting information and findings on their reports. They should also bear in mind that good inspection reports are necessary not only for documentation, enforcement, clear and specific public disclosure and follow-up compliance measures but also for the owners or operators who are in need of the same information to understand exactly what they need to be performed to come into compliance.

However, nowadays many agencies are moving towards electronic inspection tools. And the purpose of using such tools is to present challenges in documenting observations in a format of narration. For instance, by using electronic checkboxes one can identify some observations more easily. On the other hand, without using electronic checkboxes, one must include the pieces of information manually, such as information about property where the violation observed or information about a person on his financial standing, physical condition, habits, morals, and so on. Though these tools are not perfect enough, they have some capabilities to record narrative information electronically.