Facility Condition Record Planning Checklist

Photograph the whole facility before it is used, including the parts nobody looks at, and store the set somewhere it will not be overwritten.

The starting set is the only record that can never be recreated, and it is usually taken casually on a phone and then lost.

Photograph the surface, edges, fixings and drainage points separately rather than relying on wide shots of the whole area.

Wide shots flatten exactly the detail that later matters, and no amount of enlarging brings it back.

Note what is already marked, worn or patched at the outset, since anything not recorded now will later be assumed to have appeared since.

Pre-existing marks are the most common source of confusion in a conversation with a contractor.

Record which parts of the facility were reused rather than replaced, because they begin from a different condition entirely.

Reused elements are frequently judged against a new standard by people who never knew they were reused.

Write down the state of the surroundings, including fencing, gates, paths and planting, not only the facility itself.

Change in the surroundings gets attributed to the facility later, and only a starting record separates the two.

Note the conditions on the occasion the starting record was made, since a dry surface and a wet one photograph very differently.

Without this, the starting set can mislead just as easily as it helps.

Choose a small number of positions to photograph from every time, and describe each precisely enough that somebody else could stand there.

Repeatability matters more than coverage, because an unrepeatable photograph cannot be compared with anything.

Locate each viewpoint by something permanent such as a post, a corner or a gate, rather than by pacing out from an edge.

Paced positions drift with whoever is pacing, which is enough to make two photographs disagree about nothing.

Include something fixed in the frame of every photograph so position and scale can be read without any measurement.

This is what allows two people to agree that something has spread rather than argue about whether it has.

Note the height and the direction each photograph is taken from, so a repeat shot is not accidentally a different view.

Standing shots and crouching shots of the same spot look like different places once they are side by side.

Decide whether any close-up view needs a reference of its own, such as a particular joint, fixing or drainage point worth following.

A close-up with nothing identifiable in it cannot be located again, even by the person who took it.

Keep the set of viewpoints small enough that repeating them is realistic, rather than thorough enough that it is abandoned.

A modest record that is actually kept up beats a comprehensive one that stops after its first outing.

Describe what is visible in plain words, covering where it is, roughly how large it looks and what shape it takes, then stop before saying what caused it.

Whether an observation indicates wear, a defect or a fault is established by a suitably qualified professional rather than by the person who noticed it.

Avoid words that carry a verdict, such as failure, fault or damage, and keep the entry to what was actually seen.

Verdict words invite a defensive reply, whereas a description invites an explanation, which is what you actually want.

Note whether something has changed since the previous observation or whether you have simply noticed it for the first time.

These are entirely different pieces of information, and conflating them is what makes a record hard to read back.

Record how you came to notice it, whether underfoot, by sound, or by sight from a distance, since that often guides whoever looks next.

The way something announces itself is frequently more informative than its appearance.

Write down what you suspect but cannot see, and label it clearly as a suspicion rather than mixing it in with observations.

A record that keeps the two apart stays useful; one that blends them becomes an opinion piece.

Ask a qualified professional to describe anything you find difficult to put into words, rather than inventing a term for it.

Invented terminology travels into later records and misleads everybody who reads them; ask the installer or a qualified professional what the correct description is.

Record the weather at the time and what preceded it, including recent rain, frost or heat, since surfaces present very differently under each.

The same observation made after rain and in dry conditions can mean two entirely different things.

Note whether the observation was made in natural light or under the facility lighting, and whether the sun was low.

Some things are visible only in low raking light, which is why they seem to appear and disappear.

Write down what use the facility has had recently, particularly anything heavier, longer or different from its normal pattern.

Unusual use explains a great deal, and it is the context most often absent from an observation.

Note whether machinery, deliveries or any works have crossed the facility since the previous observation.

Ground and surfaces record vehicle movements long after everybody has forgotten a delivery took place.

Record anything unusual that happened in between, such as a storm, a spill, or an event with far more people present than normal.

These are the moments a record needs most, and they are exactly when nobody is thinking about record keeping.

Note who else was present when the observation was made, in case somebody remembers a detail you did not write down.

A second person is often the only route back to something that turns out to matter later.

Give whoever makes the observation a short written list of what to look at, rather than asking them to check the facility generally.

A general request produces a general answer, which is the least useful thing a record can contain.

Decide how often observations are repeated and attach that to something already happening at the facility rather than to goodwill.

Observations tied to an existing routine survive; observations relying on somebody remembering do not.

Note who is most likely to notice each kind of change, such as whoever opens up, whoever cuts the grass and the people who use the facility most often.

Different people notice different things, and the person with the clipboard is rarely the one who spots it first.

Agree what an observer does when they are unsure whether something is worth recording, so that the answer is never simply nothing.

Uncertainty is the point at which most observations are silently discarded.

Record who made each observation, so a later question can be put to the person who was actually standing there.

Anonymous entries cannot be followed up, which halves their value the moment anybody queries them.

Note plainly what an observer is not asked to do, such as climbing, opening panels or lifting covers, and where those views come from instead.

Views that require climbing, opening or lifting are obtained by a suitably qualified professional, not by whoever is making the routine observation.

Store observations in one place and in one order, so a change can be followed through rather than reconstructed from memory.

Records spread across messages, phones and notebooks contain the answer but cannot deliver it.

Keep the original photographs rather than only the cropped or annotated versions of them.

The detail you did not think was relevant is frequently the detail somebody asks about later.

Write a line beside each photograph at the time it is taken, since an unlabelled image loses its meaning surprisingly quickly.

Photographs of a surface all look alike after a short while, even to the person who took them.

Group observations by the part of the facility they concern rather than by the occasion they were made, so one thing can be followed.

Grouping by occasion suits the person writing and defeats the person reading.

Note who else can open the record, since one that only a single person can reach has a single point of failure.

This is the failure that only becomes apparent when that person is unavailable and something needs answering.

Keep the record in a form that will still open once the person who set it up is no longer involved with the facility.

Clever arrangements built around one person tend to expire with that person's involvement.

Decide in advance what makes an observation worth putting to a contractor, supplier or qualified professional rather than only recording it.

Where an observation might bear on whether the facility can safely continue in use, put it to a suitably qualified professional straight away rather than waiting for a review.

Prepare observations as a set rather than sending them one at a time as each is noticed.

A set gets a considered reply and one visit, whereas a trickle gets brief answers and no visit at all.

Send the plain description and the photographs and ask what they make of it, rather than asking them to confirm a view you have already formed.

An open question gets you their actual reading, which is the thing you were missing.

Write down what you were told in reply, including anything described as normal for this material and this kind of use.

What counts as normal for a particular material is stated by the installer or supplier, and is worth having in writing rather than as recollection.

Note which observations were left open, and keep watching those specifically instead of starting the list again each time.

Open items are where a record earns its value, and they are the first thing lost when a list is restarted.

Ask the professional what they would want recorded before their next attendance, and add it to the observer's list.

This turns a general record into one that answers the questions somebody is actually going to ask.