Inspect
BrightChecker’s Inspect workflow brings together the capabilities you need to plan, carry out and review an inspection — from the property and survey template through to the completed survey and review.
This page gives you an introduction to the main capabilities and how they fit together. It isn’t intended to document every feature or every way of working in BrightChecker. The detailed guidance is built into the platform itself, with an Education Centre on each page providing help specific to the screen and task you are working on.
We’ll therefore follow the inspection journey and show you how the main parts of Inspect fit together.
Property · Survey Templates
Property
Every property inspection is associated with a location. Select Property from the main menu and you’ll arrive at the property table, where your properties are listed and can be sorted and filtered.
Every BrightChecker organisation starts with a default property — 10 Downing Street — so there’s something ready to explore from the moment you start. Open it to get a feel for how a property works, or use the Create Property quick action to add your own.
<See The Property Table>
Creating a property starts with a few essential details, such as its address. Once those details are complete, the property is created and automatically saved as you work. From that point, the property becomes its own Property Command Centre — ready to build up as you use BrightChecker.
You can keep it simple or add as much information as you need. Add a hero image and other photographs, view the location on an interactive map, record details such as building type, construction, EPC and bedrooms, or add practical information such as access arrangements, parking and other notes. You can also keep confidential information within the record, with access controlled according to user permissions.
<See how a property is created and built up>
The Command Centre is already structured to bring the property’s activity together. You can quickly create a survey job from the property, with the relevant property information already available. As you use BrightChecker, the same Command Centre can show the surveys carried out at the property, reports produced, issues identified and work orders raised.
A newly created property simply won’t have much activity to show yet. As inspections are completed and work is identified and resolved, the Command Centre becomes an increasingly useful record of everything happening at that location.
<See the benefits of property command centre>
Survey Templates
A survey template is the checklist you use to carry out a survey or inspection. It sets out what you want to check and the information you want to capture.
BrightChecker provides a library of ready-made inspection checklists that you can use as they are, or adapt to suit your own requirements. You can also create your own survey templates from scratch.
See the inspection template table → [screenshot / short video]
BrightChecker checklists are ready for you to use, but you don’t have to use them unchanged. When you activate a BrightChecker checklist, BrightChecker creates your own unique copy for your organisation. You can use it straight away, or modify it to suit the way you work.
Templates can be provided by BrightChecker or created within your organisation, and the template table makes their source clear. Groups also help you organise and navigate larger collections of checklists.
See how to activate a BrightChecker template → [short video]
Open a template and you can see its name and description, how it is organised into sections, and the individual elements that make up the inspection. Elements are the questions and prompts used to capture information — from text and multiple choice through to dates, locations, measurements, steppers, scales, star ratings, signatures and media prompts.
You can set questions as optional or required, giving you control over what must be captured when the template is used. We’ll come back to required questions when we look at the survey response form in use.
Templates are configurable too. You can change questions and response options, adjust ranges and ratings, add or remove sections and elements, and tailor the template to the requirements of the inspection.
You can also define categories that sit alongside responses. BrightChecker provides standard categories such as Priority 1, Priority 2, Priority 3 and Information, but you can define your own when your work requires something different — for example, using RICS-specific responses rather than BrightChecker’s standard priorities.
Templates can be previewed, downloaded or modified directly in BrightChecker.
See how to create or adapt a template → [short video]
Create structured survey templates with AI.
Describe what you want to inspect and BrightChecker can create a structured survey template for you.
The AI helps you build the survey template.
Refine the questions, responses and structure before you use it.
You decide what the finished survey contains.
That matters when consistency is important. The aim isn’t to replace a defined inspection process with a free-form AI guess. It is to help you create the structure you want to use
See how AI can help create a survey template →[article]
Survey
In BrightChecker, a survey is the job of carrying out an inspection or completing a checklist. Whether you think of it as a survey, an inspection or completing a checklist, they are all handled as a survey in BrightChecker.
There are several ways to create a survey. From the main dashboard, select Create Survey. You can also create one from the Survey Tracker, where you can see and manage the lifecycle of your surveys, or create one directly from a property. Creating a survey from the Property Command Centre automatically brings that property’s information into the new survey.
If you are using the field part of BrightChecker, you can also create a survey directly from the device. This provides a quick way to get a survey underway in the field and, where necessary, you can even create the property from there.
For this part, we’ll look at creating a survey from the main BrightChecker platform.
Creating a Survey
Creating a survey starts with three things: the property, the survey template and the person carrying out the survey.
Select the property, choose the survey template and assign the person who will carry out the work. Once those three essentials are in place, select Assign and the survey is ready to go.
You can add further information if you need to, such as the date and time, priority or instructions for the person carrying out the survey. If you simply provide the three essentials, BrightChecker will set the survey for 9:00 am the following day and give it a medium priority.
See how to create a survey → [short video]
Once the survey has been assigned, BrightChecker takes you to the Survey Tracker.
Survey Tracker
The Survey Tracker shows the lifecycle of each survey from assignment through to completion. It gives you a visual view of where the survey has got to, what has already happened and, most importantly, what needs to happen next.
Each stage is represented by a simple status indicator. Amber highlights the next action, green shows what has been completed, and grey indicates something that is either no longer applicable or lies further ahead in the process.
The tracker is more than a status display. Select the indicator for the current step and BrightChecker will take you to the next logical action. Where there is more than one possible action, it presents the available choices.
The result is a visual workflow that helps you understand the state of a survey without having to work it out from a list of records or screens.
See the Survey Tracker in action → [screenshot / short video]
The Survey Tracker also provides a complete view across your surveys. The table can be filtered and sorted so you can focus on the surveys, people, properties or stages that matter to you.
From here, the tracker will tell you when it is time to move to the device being used to carry out the survey. That’s where the field part of BrightChecker takes over.
Field Dashboard
Once a survey has been assigned, the next step is to open BrightChecker on the device you will use to carry it out.
If you are using a mobile device, BrightChecker takes you directly to the Field Dashboard, where your assigned surveys are shown. The Field Dashboard is designed for working through your survey jobs in the field, rather than administering the whole system.
If the device has not been set up before, BrightChecker will guide you through adding the BrightChecker app to your device’s home screen. The process is straightforward and the instructions provided by BrightChecker cover both Android and iOS devices, so we won’t go into the device setup itself here.
Your Survey Jobs
The Field Dashboard lists your survey jobs in date order, with filters available to help you find what you need. You can filter by things such as priority or whether a survey is overdue.
Each survey shows the key information you need at a glance, including the property address, survey template, date and time.
You can also open a survey to see further details, including its location on a map and additional information about the job.
See the Field Dashboard → [screenshot / short video]
At this point, the survey is available to you, but you haven’t committed to carrying it out yet. BrightChecker initially gives you a lightweight version of the survey on your device. This means the survey can still be reallocated to someone else.
When you select the survey, BrightChecker asks whether you want to download it in full. Confirming the download brings the complete survey, including its sections and questions, onto the device.
This is also the point at which BrightChecker knows that work has started. The survey becomes associated with your device and is locked to you, so it can no longer simply be reallocated. If it needs to be given to someone else after this point, the existing survey would be deleted and a new one created and assigned to the other person.
Starting the Survey
Once the survey has been downloaded, BrightChecker confirms that everything is ready and gives you the option to Start Survey.
Select Start Survey and you are taken into the survey response screen — the part of BrightChecker where you actually carry out the inspection and complete the checklist.
The survey is organised into sections, which can be opened and closed as you work. Within those sections are the elements or questions defined by the survey template.
You can move through the survey normally, while quick navigation helps you see what you have completed and what still needs attention. BrightChecker also provides useful information about the state of the device, such as its battery level and GPS status.
You can return to your Field Dashboard at any time and come back to the survey later. Your work is retained, so you don’t lose your progress.
Most importantly, the field system is designed to keep working when you don’t have an internet connection. Your survey data can be captured offline and synchronised when connectivity is available again.
See a survey being completed → [short video]
Learn about working offline → [article]
Submitting the Survey
When you have finished, select Submit.
Before submitting, BrightChecker checks the survey for any questions that were marked as required in the template. If any required questions have not been completed, BrightChecker tells you which ones need attention and provides a direct way to return to them.
You can then complete the missing information and submit the survey, or, if you are certain that a required question does not need an answer in this particular case, you can choose to submit anyway.
Once submitted, the survey moves on to the next stage of the BrightChecker workflow.
Survey Review
Return to the Survey Tracker and the next step will be highlighted in amber: Review.
Select Review to open the survey review screen. Here you can check the information captured during the survey before it moves on to reporting.
The review screen gives you two views. One shows the original survey responses exactly as they were submitted. The other shows what will be included in the final report.
You can amend responses during the review, and BrightChecker records who made the amendment, providing an audit trail when the person reviewing the survey is different from the person who carried it out.
You can also control the media that will appear in the report. Photographs can be suppressed if they are not required, moved to a different element if they were captured in the wrong place, or used in more than one place where the same photograph is relevant.
For larger surveys, navigation by section makes it easy to move around the review, and you can search for specific elements rather than working through the entire survey.
You can also optionally use AI analysis during review. BrightChecker can analyse the reviewed inspection and provide an AI-generated summary of key findings, recommendations and the overall inspection.
When everything has been checked and any necessary changes have been made, select Approve to complete the review and move the survey forward.
See survey review in action → [short video]