What happens when an inspection has been submitted, but someone needs to check it before the report is issued?
It might be the same person who carried out the inspection. It might be somebody else carrying out a quality check. Either way, there is an important distinction between reviewing an inspection and changing the original record.
A good review process should let you correct, clarify and add to the inspection without losing sight of what was actually recorded on the day.
That’s the problem we set out to solve with BrightChecker’s enhanced review process.
Keep the original inspection
A straightforward approach to reviewing a completed survey is to open the data, change whatever needs changing and then produce the report.
The problem comes if the original response is simply overwritten.
Once that happens, you may no longer have a clear record of what was originally submitted.
BrightChecker handles this differently.
When an inspection enters review, you can see the original submission as well as the review version.
The original remains available as a record of what was actually recorded on the day.
The review starts out looking the same as the original. Opening a survey for review doesn’t change anything by itself.
Changes are clearly marked
When a reviewer changes a response, BrightChecker marks it in the review view.
The response is tagged to show that it has been altered.
That means you can tell whether you’re looking at the original information or the amended version.
This matters when the person reviewing the inspection isn’t the person who carried it out.
It is also useful when you return to your own inspection later and need to see what you changed.
You can change or add information
The review process isn’t limited to correcting existing responses.
You can change an existing response where it needs correcting or clarification, but you can also add information that wasn’t included in the original inspection.
During review, you can change or add:
- Responses
- Categories
- Notes
- Photographs
- Written review text
- Other supporting information
The review gives you the flexibility to finish the inspection record properly without having to pretend that everything was captured perfectly the first time.
The important distinction is that adding or changing information during review doesn’t erase the original submission.
Revert a response if you change your mind
Reviewing a survey isn’t always a straight line.
You might change an answer and then decide that the original was correct.
Or you might make an amendment, leave the review and come back later without being completely sure what you had changed.
You don’t have to start again.
An individual response can be reverted to the original.
You can then review it again and make a different amendment if necessary.
The original information remains available throughout the process.
Photographs need the same consideration
The same issue applies to inspection photographs.
We’ve come across this ourselves in earlier versions of the software.
A surveyor can be working quickly, take a photograph and then realise that it belongs against a different part of the inspection.
One solution would be to download the photograph and upload it again in the correct place.
But that can create another problem.
The original photograph may contain metadata associated with the inspection, including its GPS location and timestamp. Once a photograph has been taken off the system and uploaded again, that original context may no longer be as reliable.
So BrightChecker allows a photograph already taken during the inspection to be reused elsewhere in the survey.
The original media remains the same.
If you don’t want the photograph to appear in its original location, you can suppress that instance rather than deleting the photograph.
If you change your mind later, you can reactivate it.
This means you can change where the evidence is presented without unnecessarily creating another copy of the evidence.
Reorder photographs without replacing them
The order in which photographs were taken isn’t necessarily the order in which they make most sense in a report.
During review, you can click and drag the photographs to change their order.
You’re working with the existing inspection media rather than having to download, rename and upload photographs again.
The review screen shows thumbnails, but you can click a photograph to open it at a larger size.
The same applies to video, so you can review the full media rather than relying on a small thumbnail.
Use a library of comments and standard wording
Review isn’t only about correcting answers.
You may also want to add or improve the written explanation around a finding.
BrightChecker has a comment library that can be used for reusable pieces of text.
You can build a library of paragraphs and tag them with relevant words.
For example, if you have standard wording relating to asbestos, you can search the comment library for that term and see the relevant paragraphs you’ve already created.
Select the wording you want and insert it into the review.
That can save repeatedly typing the same technical explanation while still allowing the reviewer to edit the text for the particular inspection.
Review text isn’t limited by the original box
Longer comments shouldn’t become a battle with a fixed-size text field.
The review text areas expand as you add more content.
The report expands with them.
If an inspection needs a substantial explanation of an issue, you can write it.
You’re not restricted to a handful of lines because the original field happened to be a certain size.
Not every inspection needs the same level of review
Some inspections are straightforward.
A pool inspection, for example, might contain a relatively small number of clear checks and observations. If everything is satisfactory, the person who carried out the inspection may be happy to review it and approve it immediately.
Other inspections involve considerably more professional judgement.
We’ve spoken to RICS surveyors who don’t necessarily issue the report immediately after completing the inspection. They may leave the findings for a while and think through the implications before finalising the report.
For those inspections, a proper review process matters.
The reviewer can come back to the original inspection, consider the findings, make any necessary amendments or additions and produce the report when they’re satisfied with it.
There isn’t one correct review process for every business.
You might use:
Inspect → approve → report
for a straightforward inspection.
Or:
Inspect → review → amend → check → report
for an inspection where more judgement is involved.
The software should support both.
Review more than the answers
The review process isn’t limited to changing the original response.
You can change or add:
- Responses
- Categories
- Notes
- Photographs
- Written review content
- Other supporting information
The original inspection remains available while you make those changes.
That distinction matters.
The review isn’t simply opening the original data and overwriting it.
See the report before approving it
You don’t necessarily have to wait until you’ve finished every part of the review before seeing the report.
You can produce a report from the current review state.
That gives you a chance to see what the inspection actually looks like as a finished document.
Perhaps the review is 95% where you want it, but you want to see the report before deciding whether anything else needs changing.
Produce it.
Look at it.
If you need to make another change, go back into the review.
Approval is part of the workflow
Once you’re satisfied with the inspection, you can approve it.
The approval controls are available at the top of the page and also at the bottom, so you don’t have to hunt through the interface to finish the process.
But approval doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of the road.
If you later decide that something needs changing, the workflow lets you return to the review stage.
The status is context-sensitive, so selecting the approved review stage takes you directly to the option to revert the inspection to an unapproved state.
You can then review it again, make the change, produce another report and approve it again.
Each report is its own version
When you produce a report, BrightChecker creates a timestamped instance of that report.
If you later return to the review, make a change and produce another report, the new report is another timestamped instance.
The earlier report isn’t silently rewritten.
You can therefore have:
Original inspection
→ First reviewed report
→ Later reviewed report
without the latest version simply replacing the earlier one.
That gives you a history of what was originally recorded and what was subsequently produced.
A review process should preserve the history
The purpose of a review isn’t to make the original inspection disappear.
It is to give you a controlled way to check it, correct it, add to it and turn it into the report you actually want to issue.
That’s particularly important when the inspection involves professional judgement, when another person is carrying out a quality check, or when the report may have significant consequences.
For a simple inspection, the process can be quick.
For a more involved inspection, you can take the time you need.
Either way, you should be able to see what was originally recorded and what was subsequently changed or added.
That’s why we built BrightChecker’s enhanced review process around the original inspection rather than simply overwriting it.
Review the inspection. Change what needs changing. Add what needs adding. Keep the original.
Flexibility by Design.
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