Our University recommends following the Bond Solon report format. It's fully explained in this book http//
What's the industry opinion on this? My personal experience is reports I have seen tend to be a little ad-hoc to each company with a general design which is modified for each specific case.
This book describes the layout to contain
3 Introduction
3.1 The Writer
3.2 Summary of the Case
3.3 Summary of Conclusions
3.4 Parties Involved
3.5 Technical Terms
4 Statement of Instructions
5 Investigation of the Facts
5.1 Assumed Facts
5.2 Obtained Facts
5.3 Methodology
5.4 Observed Facts
5.5 Documents
5.6 Interviews and examinations
5.7 Research
5.8 Tests and Experiments
6 The Opinion
7 Statements
7.1 Statement of Compliance
7.2 Statement of Conflicts
7.3 Declaration
8 Appendix
In very short the investigation of the fact section just analysis and lists all facts discovered. Each fact is individually numbered.
The opinion section then strings these facts together, just making reference to the facts stated by fact number giving the professional opinion and answering the questions.
Although I haven't quite seen this process used in industry before, I have seen similar and this described layout ended up making a lot of sense.
Do others use this? What's a general opinion?
Steve