The reports arrive, and then they sit in an inbox
Your customers' lifts are examined by their insurers' engineering surveyors, and the reports come back in a trickle. Some arrive from the customer, forwarded with a line saying please see attached. Some come straight from the inspection body. Some never arrive at all, and you only find out when the customer asks why a defect from March has not been dealt with.
Each report looks different. One insurer uses a plant reference number that bears no resemblance to your lift ID. Another lists the site by the landlord's name rather than the building name. Defects are graded in different ways, with different wording for how soon something should be looked at. Someone in your office opens each PDF, works out which lift it is, and types the defects into a spreadsheet or the job system.
Why the admin keeps backing up
The reports are not the problem. The problem is that every one needs a human to translate it into your own references before anything can happen, and that translation work lands on whoever has time, which is often nobody in a busy month.
- Insurer plant numbers and your lift IDs are held in different places, if they are cross-referenced at all.
- Reports come through several channels: customer forwards, direct emails, portal downloads.
- Defect wording varies, so it is hard to compare one report with the last.
- There is no single list of outstanding defects per lift, so repeats are missed.
- Nobody owns the inbox the reports land in.
The result is a pile of PDFs with the real information locked inside, and a team that finds out about defects when the customer does.
What it costs to leave them unread
Unread examination reports put your contract relationship at risk. Customers expect their maintainer to know what the report says, and to come to them with a quote or a plan. When the customer has to prompt you, it looks as though you are not across their lifts. Some customers will also ask why a defect that sounds like maintenance was not picked up on the last service visit, and you need the report and the service history side by side to answer that properly.
It also costs you work. Defects listed on examination reports often lead to repairs and quotes. A report that sits unread is repair work that goes to whoever the customer asks next.
Reading the reports so your team can act on them
We build a report handling process that takes the PDFs from wherever they arrive and turns them into structured records against the right lift. Decisions about what each defect means and what to do stay with your engineers and managers.
- A dedicated mailbox, or a forwarding rule, collects reports from customers and inspection bodies in one place. Portal downloads can be dropped into a folder.
- Each PDF is read using document extraction, with a language model such as Anthropic Claude or OpenAI's models used to pull out site, plant reference, examination date and each listed defect with its stated timescale.
- A cross-reference table maps insurer plant numbers to your lift IDs. New ones are flagged for someone to match once, and are remembered after that.
- Extracted defects appear in a review queue with the original PDF alongside, so a person checks and confirms before anything is filed.
- Confirmed defects become open items on the lift record in your job system, with the report attached and the stated timescale shown.
- A weekly list shows reports received, defects outstanding by customer and any lift where no report has arrived when one would be expected.
| Task | Done by the system | Done by your team |
|---|---|---|
| Collecting reports | Mailbox and folder watching | Forwarding any strays |
| Matching to lift | Using the cross-reference table | Confirming new plant numbers |
| Listing defects | Extraction from the PDF | Checking against the original |
| Deciding the response | Nothing | Engineer or manager review |
We keep the extraction honest by never auto-filing without review. If a scan is poor or a defect is ambiguous, it goes to the queue marked as uncertain.
What your office gains
Reports stop being attachments and become lists. The service manager opens a queue each morning, confirms what has been extracted and moves on. Defects are on the lift record, so the engineer attending next week sees them. When a customer rings about their report, you already know what it says.
Over time you also build something useful: a history of defects per lift across several examinations, which helps when you are talking to a customer about repairs versus modernisation.
Is your office in this position?
- Examination reports land in several inboxes.
- You rely on customers to forward reports to you.
- Insurer plant numbers are not linked to your own lift IDs.
- Customers have asked about defects you had not seen.
- There is no single list of open defects per lift.