Clients are regularly asked to act on technical material they did not commission and cannot easily test: a vendor’s survey, a consultant’s assessment, a contractor’s remediation proposal, an investigation report, a package of evidence assembled for a dispute. The commercial question is narrow, and it is not whether the work is good. It is whether it can be relied on for the decision in front of them.
Independent technical review answers that question. It is a review of evidence and reasoning rather than a second survey, and it is not certification, approval or acceptance of design responsibility.
What a review examines
A review looks at four things.
- What the material establishes. The conclusions the evidence presented genuinely supports.
- What it assumes. The points at which the author has filled a gap, whether or not the assumption is identified.
- What is missing. Information the conclusions would need in order to hold, and which is absent.
- What follows. A recommendation on reliance: whether the client can act on the material as it stands, act on it with stated qualifications, or should not act until something specific has been resolved.
That last item separates a useful review from a critique. Listing shortcomings is straightforward. Saying what the client should now do is the work.
Six circumstances where review changes the answer
- Before acquiring on the strength of a vendor’s report. That report was prepared for the vendor, for the vendor’s purpose, at a time when the vendor’s intentions were not the buyer’s. It may be entirely competent and still not answer the buyer’s question. A review establishes what it covers, what it assumes, and what a buyer with different intentions would still need to know.
- When a contractor proposes a remediation approach. A contractor proposing works has an interest in the scope of those works. That is not an accusation, it is the ordinary structure of the relationship. A review tests whether the approach addresses the cause of the problem or its symptoms, and whether the investigation behind it supports the scope proposed.
- When consultants disagree. Two technical positions that cannot both be right usually differ for a traceable reason: a different assumption, a different sample, a different reading of the same record. A review that identifies the point of divergence is more useful than a third opinion added to the pile.
- When a strategy will commit significant cost. The moment before commitment is the cheapest point at which to test the reasoning. After commitment the same review produces the same findings and far fewer options.
- When evidence will be relied on by others. Technical material assembled for one purpose is often repurposed for another. Review establishes what it can carry, and where it is thin, before it is put in front of a funder, a board or a tribunal.
- When the subject sits outside your own team’s specialism. A capable project team can still be the wrong reader for a specialist report. Review gives the client a reading from someone whose only role is to assess the material.
Proportion
Review costs a fraction of the work it reviews, and a far smaller fraction of the decision it informs. That is the argument for it, and it is not an argument for reviewing everything. Review is worth commissioning where the decision is significant, where the client cannot readily test the material itself, and where there is still time for the answer to change what happens next. Where any one of those three is absent, it usually is not.
How to scope a review
The most reliable way to waste a review is to instruct it broadly. “Review this report” produces a general commentary. A review scoped to a decision produces an answer.
Useful scopes read like questions. Can we rely on this façade assessment when setting the remediation budget? Does this investigation support the conclusion that the cause is what the author says it is? Is the proposed remediation scope appropriate to the defect described? Is there anything in this package that would not hold up if it were tested?
The reviewer should also be told what other material exists, including material the original author did not have. A review carried out on a partial file identifies gaps that are not really gaps, which wastes time and reflects unfairly on the original author.
What review does not do
- It does not make a deficient report sufficient. Where the underlying evidence is not there, review identifies that. It cannot supply it.
- It does not transfer responsibility. The original author remains responsible for their work. The reviewer is responsible for the review.
- It does not settle questions of professional judgement where the evidence genuinely supports more than one view. There, the useful output is a clear account of the range of reasonable positions and of what would narrow it.
Working with the original author
Review is not an adversarial exercise and it goes better when it is not conducted as one. A reviewer who asks the original author for the inspection record and the document schedule, before drawing conclusions about what was and was not done, reaches a sounder result. A good many apparent weaknesses turn out to be presentation rather than substance, and finding that out early is in everyone’s interest, the client’s most of all.
Where a real deficiency does emerge, it should be stated plainly, with its consequence for the client’s decision, and without commentary on the author.
EMTED helps clients decide whether a review is worth commissioning, scope it to the decision, and appoint an appropriately registered firm to carry it out, contracting directly with the client.