A day on site, two days at the desk
A legionella risk assessment survey is detailed work. Your assessor walks the building, traces the system from incoming mains to outlets, records tanks, calorifiers, pipework, outlets, little-used areas and any issues, takes photos, sketches a schematic and notes the management arrangements. That part takes a day for a medium building, more for a complex one.
Then the write-up. Notes from a clipboard or tablet, dozens of photos with camera file names, and a Word template with pages of standard text. The assessor copies the last report of a similar building, deletes what does not apply, types in every asset, inserts and captions every photo, writes the findings and recommendations, and formats tables that break every time a row is added. It often takes longer than the survey. The backlog of unwritten reports grows, and clients wait.
Why the write-up takes so long
- Site notes are unstructured, so they have to be interpreted and retyped.
- Photos are not linked to the asset or observation they illustrate.
- Boilerplate is copied from old reports, bringing errors with it.
- Asset tables are built by hand in Word.
- Recommendations are written from scratch each time, even when they are common.
The assessor's judgement is the valuable part of the report. The rest is assembly, and assembly is what is taking the time.
The cost of a report backlog
Assessors are among your most skilled and scarce staff, and they spend much of their time formatting. Clients wait for reports and cannot act on recommendations until they arrive. Copy-and-paste errors, such as another building's name in the text, damage confidence. And the backlog limits how many surveys you can take on.
Structured survey capture and report assembly
- On site, the assessor uses a tablet app built around your survey method: system description, each asset with type, location, condition and readings, observations and photos attached to the right item.
- The app works offline and lets the assessor add assets quickly by type, with sensible defaults, and sketch or annotate photos.
- Common observations and recommendations are picked from your own approved library and edited as needed, so wording is consistent but not rigid.
- Back at the office, the draft report is assembled automatically: standard sections from your templates, site details, asset tables, photos in place with captions, observations and recommendations in order.
- The assessor reviews the draft, writes the sections that need professional judgement, such as the overall assessment and priorities, and signs it off.
- The final report is issued as a PDF, filed to the site record, and its review date and recommendations flow into the review tracker and remedial quotes.
| Report part | Produced by |
|---|---|
| Site and client details | System, from records |
| Asset tables and photos | System, from survey capture |
| Standard sections | System, from approved templates |
| Observations and recommendations | Assessor, using the library and editing |
| Overall assessment and sign-off | Assessor only |
We can use AI to tidy the assessor's dictated or typed notes into clear sentences, always as a suggestion for them to accept or change. It never writes the assessment's conclusions.
An assessor's week with less formatting
The assessor leaves site with the report mostly assembled. Their desk time goes on judgement and review rather than tables and captions. Reports reach clients sooner, in a consistent layout, and the recommendations become findings in your system that the estimator can quote from straight away.
Reviews also get easier. When the building is reassessed, the previous survey's assets and observations load into the app, and the assessor updates what has changed rather than starting over.
Does your assessment team feel this?
- Write-ups take as long as, or longer than, the survey.
- There is a backlog of surveyed but unwritten reports.
- Reports are built by copying a previous one.
- Photos are matched to observations by hand.
- Recommendations do not flow into quotes automatically.