The first outsourced report should answer a practical question: does this arrangement improve your reporting workflow without weakening the checks you rely on? A quick return time or a polished first page cannot answer that on its own.
A short pilot gives a surveying practice a way to assess the complete process, from preparing the inspection pack to approving the finished report. The scorecard below is a suggested management tool, not an RICS assessment scheme or a guarantee of results.
Choose a representative instruction
Start with a Level 2 instruction that is appropriate to your usual work and for which your inspection record is complete. Avoid using an unusually simple case as the only test, or sending a difficult, incomplete pack and expecting a writer to resolve its technical gaps.
Use a property you know well enough to assess the draft against your own findings. Tell the supplier which template to use, what output you expect and how questions should be raised. Confirm availability, price, amendment arrangements and the delivery deadline before sending the pack. A pilot need not involve a discount or free work; agree its commercial terms explicitly.
Record the baseline before you begin
Use your own recent comparable instructions to estimate the time normally spent organising evidence, preparing wording, entering the report template and completing final review. Keep an estimate labelled as an estimate. Different properties and different levels of note quality make exact comparisons difficult.
During the pilot, record your active time separately from elapsed time. A draft delivered tomorrow may involve little time at your desk, while a draft returned within hours may still require substantial clarification and editing. Both measures matter, but they describe different things.
Use a scorecard that exposes the work left with you
| Measure | Record | What to examine |
|---|---|---|
| Pack preparation | Your minutes organising and sending the material. | Was this additional work, or part of your normal process? |
| Clarifications | Number of queries and your time answering them. | Did questions identify genuine gaps or repeat information already supplied? |
| Draft accuracy | Incorrect facts, unsupported statements and missing supplied findings. | Separate material technical problems from minor wording preferences. |
| Template completion | Missing fields, misplaced text and formatting corrections. | Was the agreed deliverable returned in a usable form? |
| Review and amendments | Your checking time, correction time and revision rounds. | Did the draft reduce work or move it into another stage? |
| Delivery and cost | Agreed deadline, actual return and total supplier charge. | Include any agreed extras and time lost resolving delivery problems. |
Do not collapse every result into one numerical score. A factually unreliable draft should not pass simply because it arrived quickly. Decide in advance which problems would prevent approval, regardless of time saved.
Count total surveyor time honestly
Add preparation, clarification, review, correction and administration time together. Compare that total with the work you would otherwise have done on a similar instruction. Do not count all drafting hours as saved if some of those hours have become briefing or checking time.
The supplier fee is a separate cost. Any commercial benefit depends on what the released time is actually used for, your workload and the consistency of future results. More spare time does not automatically produce another paid instruction. Our guide to measuring Level 2 report-writing time provides a useful starting point.
Make feedback specific enough to act on
Group corrections into factual errors, missing evidence, unsupported conclusions, template issues and house-style preferences. Explain the source of each correction. “Use the recorded rear elevation” gives a writer something concrete to fix; “not our style” does not.
Return one consolidated amendment request and check the revised copy against it. Keep a record of unresolved questions. The amendment and version-control guide describes a straightforward way to manage this handover.
Decide whether to repeat, refine or stop
One successful job is encouraging, but it does not establish dependable capacity across all your instructions. If the first result is sound, repeat the test across a small, varied set of suitable cases before reserving more work. Look for recurring corrections and whether feedback improves the next draft.
If the arrangement requires you to rewrite most sections, identify the reason before continuing: incomplete inputs, unclear instructions, a template mismatch or unsuitable drafting support. Some issues can be resolved with a better process. Others mean the service is not a good fit.
Keep approval with the inspecting surveyor
The pilot does not change the approval process. The inspecting surveyor reviews the full draft against the inspection record, confirms the assessment and advice, makes amendments, approves and issues the final report. A supplier’s internal checks are useful, but do not replace that professional review.
The Survey Edit offers Level 2 report drafting from your notes, photographs, template and instructions. If you would like to assess whether it fits your practice, review the service and current options, read the terms and conditions and enquire about an initial instruction. Agree the scope and use the pilot to measure the result.
You inspect. We write.