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Inspection Reports

Inspectors use APM inspection reports to collect and analyze information about the equipment or system for which they are responsible. Analysis often involves a holistic, detailed analysis to understand the whole picture regarding the assets’ health. Consequently, the report includes the indicator readings and collection information from two or more checksheets. You can record details of your analysis, summarize your findings, and make recommendations for further actions in the report.

As a result of the analysis, you can create failure or anomaly records to track the status of individual problems, acknowledge indicator alarms, and submit requests for one-time corrections. You can also review the degradation rates of the indicators inspected, overriding the calculated rates when appropriate. You can review next inspection dates for indicators and standard tasks and override next inspection dates, if appropriate.

You can attach photographs and documents to reports, add them to your favorites list, change their statuses, and view their audit histories.

Developing an inspection report involves the following tasks. Links are provided to topics that explain each task in detail.

Set up APM for Inspection Reports

Before you begin creating inspection reports, ensure that the following implementation tasks have been performed:

•	Define or revise inspection report types. See Setting up Inspection Report Types.

•	Set up inspection report statuses. See Setting up Inspection Report Statuses.

•	Set approval statuses and routes for inspection reports. See Document Approvals.

Create the Report and Collect Information

Create the inspection report and collect the checksheets that you will need to review for the analysis. You can create the report from scratch and browse for checksheets to add to it as they become available. You can also open a checksheet and either create an inspection report or link the checksheet to an existing report.

Whenever a checksheet is added to a report, a link is created between the two objects. You can view a checksheet’s link to a report in the Checksheet window, Properties view, General tab. Although a report can contain many checksheets, each checksheet can link to only one report. If you need to analyze the checksheet on a different report, you can remove one link and add another.

After creating the report, review and modify its properties, for example, the title and planned start and completion dates.

For more information, see Creating an Inspection Report.

Analyze Indicator Readings

You can now perform a holistic, detailed analysis of the results of the checksheets or inspections. The analysis involves a detailed review of all of the indicator readings that have been taken. For each indicator, you can view the readings and degradation history to look for abnormal changes in the asset condition or degradation rate. You can read the collection notes to look for any information that will help you assess the health of the system.

You can also read the analyses, summaries, and recommendations on each of the checksheets. These narratives can be valuable input to your report because they provide the inspectors’ insights into what they observed.

For more information, see Working with an Inspection Report.

Update Indicator Degradation Rates

As a result of the degradation rate analysis of the indicators and a review of the asset integrity operating window (IOW), you might need to override the degradation rates of indicators. The calculated rates might not properly reflect changes that have occurred to the asset IOW. You can enter an inspector degradation rate for the indicators.

For more information, see Changing an Indicator’s Degradation Rate.

Request Maintenance Correction Actions

As a result of the analysis, you might need to request a corrective action from the maintenance department. You can do this by opening the Indicator Reading window and creating a follow-up work request or order. Or, in the Inspection Report window, select a reading on the Readings tab and click Follow-Up Work.

In either case, you can view a list of the work documents in the Inspection Report window’s Inspection Summary view, Follow Up tab.

For more information, see Requesting Follow-up Work from an Inspection Report.

Acknowledge Indicator Alarms

Rather than acknowledging alarms at the time when the readings are entered, you can choose to wait until all inspections are completed. This allows you to have as much information as possible before acting on the alarms.

When you are ready to acknowledge the alarms, you can select one or more readings and use the standard alarm acknowledgment process. In this way, you can send one notification to the maintenance department to address more than one indicator in alarm.

For more information, see Acknowledging Indicator Alarms and Warnings.

Select Inspection Photographs

The inspection report contains a list of the photographs attached to indicator readings and checksheets. If you wish to include some of the photographs in your report, for example, for printing, you can browse for and add photographs on the Photos tab. You can select photographs from earlier inspections of the same indicators or asset.

For more information, see Adding a Photograph to an Inspection Report.

Create Failure or Anomaly Records

You might discover that an asset requires early action to mitigate risk and then maintenance action to correct a problem. In this case, create a failure or anomaly record to track the situation. The mitigation strategy and other actions will be planned later as part of anomaly tracking.

For more information, see Creating a Failure Record from an Inspection Report.

Complete the Report’s Narrative Sections

The inspection report contains three narrative sections: inspection analysis, inspection summary, and recommendations. The narratives are an important output of the inspections because they document your thoughts on the condition of the assets, what actions need to be performed, if any, and when the next inspection needs to be performed. When you have finished the analysis, it is time to complete each of the narratives.

For more information, see Working with an Inspection Report.

Mark Readings as Regulatory

Now that you have completed the analysis, you can judge whether the inspections met the requirement of the governing body. If they do, select Readings related to the report meet regulatory inspection requirements in report properties. If the report status supports this option, each of the indicator readings on the checksheets are updated as “regulatory inspections”.

For more information, see Designating Readings as Regulatory.

Update Next Inspection Dates

One of the last steps in the inspection process is to start planning the next inspection. Review the next inspection information for the assets’ indicators and standard tasks. First, review the next inspection dates for the assets’ indicators and adjust the next inspection dates for those that require it. Repeat the process for the assets’ standard tasks.

For more information, Updating Next Inspection Dates.

Send the Report for Review and Approval

You might wish to ask another employee to review the report and make suggestions. To send the reviewer a shortcut to the report, click the Inspection Report menu and then Send To. Address and send the email.

When the report is complete, you can submit it for approval, if your organization uses the APM formal approval process. Click the Inspection Report menu and then Send for Approval. On the resulting dialog, select the appropriate approval route and click OK. The report is submitted to the first approver on the route.

If the approver requests changes, you can redraft the report, modify it, and submit it for approval again.

For more information, Sending an Inspection Report for Approval.

Print the Report

Before closing the report, you might wish to print it for your records. You can also print it to PDF and attach the file to the report in APM.

For more information, Printing Inspection Reports.

Change the Report Status

To complete the report, change the status to complete.

For more information, see Creating an Inspection Report.