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Episode 16 - Part 1: The importance of independent reviews of your reports
64 Plays2 years ago
Kate Charrington joins us for our first episode of Season 2 of Survey Booker Sessions.
Kate is the Director of Projekt3 and is focused on helping residential surveyors future-proof their business by introducing and developing sustainability into their products and practices.
We discuss 3 topics together and in this first part we are discussing the importance of having an independent review of your reports.
In this video, we discuss:
🔍 Why is having a third party reviewing your reports important?
🪞 When is a self-evaluation appropriate?
📖 Understanding reflection and proof-reading is not an evaluation
✅ How does the process of an independent evaluation work and how often should you do it?
🧑🦳 Can you rely on self-evaluation as you get more experienced?
📝 What are some of the issues with standard phrases?
⁉️ Are jargon-free reports really jargon-free?
🎺 When can you really claim you offer high-quality reports?
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Transcript
Introduction to Survey Booker Sessions
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Survey Booker Sessions. Tune in to hear from people working in a range of industries and roles to provide you ideas that you can take away and use in your own business. I'm your host Matt Nally, the founder and director of Survey Booker, which is the leading CRM and survey management system for surveyors.
Kate Harrington's Role and Project 3
00:00:15
Speaker
So on this episode of Survey Booker Sessions, we've got Kate Harrington from Project 3, so thanks for coming on today.
00:00:21
Speaker
No problem, thank you. Do you want to give us a bit of background as to what you do before we sort of start going into different topics that we've got lined up for today? Sure, yeah. So my name is Kate Charington, as Matt said. I'm Director of Project 3, which is just me. Essentially, my work boils down to helping surveyors actually improve their home survey reports.
00:00:41
Speaker
in a couple of different ways. So I run a future proofing home service program, but also I undertake quality assessments for independent surveys and particularly micro businesses.
00:00:52
Speaker
I think there's a few topics I'd like to cover today. And we might put this out as one episode or there'll be three different ones that people can
Importance of Third-Party Review
00:00:59
Speaker
listen to. But the first one I'm really interested in is based on what you're doing, why is having a third party reviewing your reports important? Like does it really matter? Or can you just go through it yourself periodically? Like what's the benefit? Yeah, sure. So really good question. So I think firstly, I would say that it is within a surveyor's power to absolutely kind of
00:01:22
Speaker
self-evaluate, but also it's actually their duty, I would say, to do that as well. I don't think that there is a kind of need to merely do one or the other. I absolutely think of self-evaluating quality assessing your own survey reports is as valuable as having independent reviews, but I don't think they should necessarily actually be in place of each other.
00:01:51
Speaker
If we think about the kind of benefits of kind of evaluating your own, so first and foremost, well, you're actually at the heart of what you do, right? You're the person that can actually amend your own reports. You're the person who can actually see any mistakes that you may have made when going through your site notes or whatever, and actually making sure that you're actually putting the right things into the survey itself.
Self-Evaluation for Improvement
00:02:17
Speaker
So you're actually very much kind of closer to home, if you will, in terms of actually making sure that what you're actually delivering in terms of your survey report is not just correct, but also actually meeting standards as well. Also from that kind of self evaluation perspective, I think what that really helps a surveyor to do is actually create that sense of continual improvement. And that's really important, that's what we do
00:02:46
Speaker
year after year in terms of CPD. And I think whilst knowledge in terms of CPD is one thing, quality is obviously another and that's driven by continually reflecting on what it is that you're actually delivering. So like I say, that self kind of assessment piece is still really valuable and really important.
Role of Independent Quality Assessments
00:03:08
Speaker
The place where kind of independent quality assessment or auditing, if you will, kind of comes in
00:03:15
Speaker
is really drawn from the fact that it's at arm's length. So if you think any of the work that you do, any work that I do, sometimes we do it same thing day in, day out, particularly from a surveying perspective. Yes, we're seeing different properties, but ultimately we're producing a survey report, right? So we're doing the same thing day in, day out. And as a result of that, we can potentially become complacent in what we're doing.
00:03:44
Speaker
So having that independent quality assessment is really important from the perspective of having that truly objective opinion and viewpoint of, well, okay, A, is this correct, but B, importantly, from kind of my standpoint and what I do on a day-to-day basis, is are you actually meeting
00:04:03
Speaker
the standards to which you're actually trying to align yourself to. So whether that be RPSA with that be RICS home survey standards, are you actually making sure that you're delivering on the standards required? And also in addition to that, I think from an independent quality assessment perspective,
00:04:23
Speaker
if you do have independent quality assessments. So that can potentially help in terms of your PI as well, because you're actually demonstrating the fact that you are keen and willing to have an independent review undertaken. And it's not, it's unfortunately, it's not something that's actually undertaken regularly.
00:04:48
Speaker
but all kind of overseen by people. So from that perspective, it's really important as
Timing for Self-Evaluation
00:04:53
Speaker
well. But like I say, both help to really kind of drive quality, avoid mistakes, reduce claims, reduce complaints, but equally both have their place in making a home survey as good as it can be. But I don't think that they should be done just one or the other.
00:05:14
Speaker
Okay, so if you're doing a self evaluation, when's appropriate? Because obviously, there's the period of reflection you're meant to have before submitting your report out. So is that enough of a self audit in terms of a pause? I've looked back over my report, I'm happy with what I put in there. Or should it be I've taken a day aside, I'm looking at quite a few reports and what are the good points? I like my reports, what do I think is lacking? So what's the level we should go to?
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, that is a really good question. So I think from the perspective of time, I'm kind of hesitant to align to that concept of, you know, we should do it within this period of time, because ultimately what we want to make sure we're doing is delivering a report that reflects what we've seen on our inspection, but also actually meets the survey standards that you're trying to align to.
00:06:12
Speaker
When I talk about quality assessment or vetting or auditing, however you'd like to frame it, I'm not talking about proofreading, which is what every surveyor should be doing. And I really urge every surveyor to. But we're not talking about proofreading.
00:06:28
Speaker
we're talking about have you actually met the fundamental principles of achieving a level one survey, level two, level three, or those equivalents? And whether you do that the same day, again, I mean, you mentioned about reflection there. I think reflection is absolutely important. And if you're delivering surveys, personally, I think that you do need that time.
00:06:57
Speaker
Sorry, I'm kind of hesitant to say because there are surveyors who do deliver reports within 24 hours, right? And I wouldn't like to say that that's a bad thing. Maybe that is part of their USP, you know. But equally, I think that period of reflection is vitally important. And you might be really grumpy one day. You might have had a bad day. You might have written something that actually doesn't really make sense.
00:07:27
Speaker
which I can see some of. So I think if you do at least allow until the following day to go back over it and not just proofread like I've mentioned in terms of spelling and grammar etc but actually fundamentally say to yourself well okay
00:07:46
Speaker
have I told the client what they need to be told within the scope of my terms of engagement, then that's a little bit different and that can be done within your own kind of device timeframe.
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a fair point. It's difficult enough writing an email sometimes in terms of you go back over it and you realise I've missed half the context, so it made sense in my head, but if I'm explaining it to someone else, actually, it's quite a bit more in there. I suppose then in terms of flipping it into the independent assessment and the independent auditing, what's the benefit of doing that? What do you cover? How does that process work? How often should
Remote Independent Assessment Process
00:08:23
Speaker
you do it? So I actually offer
00:08:26
Speaker
I used to offer ad hoc kind of quality assessments. I don't tend to do that so much now because I think when it comes to quality assessing, if you're truly of the mindset that you're going to continuously provide high quality reports, you can't just have a one-off independent review and then say, hey,
00:08:45
Speaker
I'm great, please come and get a survey from me. So that's why I typically tend to carry out monthly or annual services which have a certain amount of reports actually looked at. And of course that will be dependent on whether you're a one person surveyor or whether you've actually got a team. I typically work with
00:09:09
Speaker
uh, independent, you know, micro business surveyors, um, who, I mean, they can have one per month. They might have, have more. I think just getting started is really key. Um, because as it stands, there's a lot of solo surveyors, as I call them, um, kind of out there who just don't have that, that oversight. Um, so whether it's, whether it's me, whether it's appear, you know, make sure that you're having some kind of.
00:09:36
Speaker
external oversight really of your reports and it's not about
00:09:44
Speaker
getting it done before they go out, because ultimately that's your responsibility. I'm not here to kind of validate your appointment anyway, because of course I've not been to see the property for one thing. Secondly, that's not my bag, that's not what I want to be doing. But in terms of how it works, do you mean in terms of the kind of process itself? Yeah, so like, do you do it remotely? Do you turn up and say how many
00:10:10
Speaker
reports would you look at? What are you actually looking for in those? Sure. So I mean, in terms of my work, so it's done all remotely. So I made a
00:10:20
Speaker
a pretty big kind of pledge to myself at the beginning of my journey with Project 3 to make sure that everything that I was doing wouldn't require me to travel about in my car all the time. So for me, it's all done on a remote basis where I essentially deliver a kind of privately accessed folder for people to insert their documents and then I'll review them and then send them a report back, which they can obviously then use to actually
00:10:49
Speaker
have a look at not just where I've actually stated you know this is where the report's actually not met the requirements of the survey standard and here are the suggested improvements as well. So in terms of my kind of product if you will it's not just about kind of stating where a survey hasn't quite met the requirements
00:11:16
Speaker
as they relate to the standard, it's also about suggesting where they can actually improve as well, because I think that's really important from not just a quality perspective, but also to kind of get to a USP element as well. Yeah, it's one of the things that I see a lot of debate around is
00:11:36
Speaker
photos in report, you know, should that be an upsell or should that be a standard? Because we're now looking at people putting potentially videos in, you know, or sending video links out, which explains a lot more than a photo
Staying Updated with Market Standards
00:11:47
Speaker
can. But the idea obviously of the photo is it gives more context to what you're talking about. But I suppose with that, my point is,
00:11:55
Speaker
If you're working alone and you're not getting to see what the market is doing generally, because you're working with your own bubble zone, whatever you want to call it, then you may not realize how much the market has moved on in terms of what other people are providing within their reports in terms of content, quality, whatever it might be. But equally, is it better suited to people that are newer within the business in terms of the external auditing and as you get older,
00:12:24
Speaker
or more experienced is probably the better word of putting it. You know, you can do more self-auditing or is it something you should constantly do? I think it's constant. I think it has to be, like I said earlier, if you do something over and over again, yes, it might become second nature in terms of the process, but actually, you know, even just basic things like our survey is actually reviewing their standard phrases.
00:12:53
Speaker
on a regular basis. I can say from what I see, no. You know, there are things which have moved on, I think, particularly in terms of things like minimum energy efficiency standards. I still see surveys which actually kind of comment on these as a policy that's going to happen versus something that's actually already in place. So even things like that is,
00:13:20
Speaker
You know, you would think simple, but actually something which surveyors probably don't have a lot of time to do, probably. But equally, I would say that they should afford themselves the time to go through their phrases and make sure they're all up to date. But I think regardless of age, regardless of experience, you can do exactly what I said. You can self-assess.
00:13:48
Speaker
you need an independent eye, much like, well, if you think about, you know, business accounts, you know, I like the fact that I have an accountant who actually is over it, right? It's all about having somebody else to just check things over, make sure everything's been accounted for or whatever. So, yeah, whichever kind of stage you're at in your surveying journey, I think it's really important that you
00:14:18
Speaker
that you access both of those. I suppose it comes back to the point you don't know what you don't know so you may not realise what you're missing out or not commenting on well enough or whatever it might be if you're not getting that external context because you're just not aware that you don't know it. Exactly. You mentioned about, you mentioned photos
00:14:39
Speaker
And that's a really interesting one for me and one which I frequently kind of bang the desk up because I'm irritated. And what I mean by that is just that, you know, photos, what do they, what's that phrase? They say, you know, photos can tell a thousand words, right?
00:14:57
Speaker
but they can't if you don't know what you're looking at. So it's all very well inserting a picture, but are you actually inserting annotations and captions to supplement that for the client as well? And that's an example of something simple, which can absolutely be rectified quickly and will not just help the client, but will elevate the quality of a report instantly. And it's something that's missed off
00:15:27
Speaker
That'll tie into something we talked about later around how you increase your fees through better reports as well, which comes onto explaining it as well. I suppose the other aspect then, you're seeing a lot of reports from a lot of surveyors and one of the
00:15:41
Speaker
It gets used as a USP. I think it possibly can't be an USP anymore because it's something that everyone says, but let's talk about jargon free reports. Do you find going through them, they are jargon free, they do make sense, or are they often quite technical? People might not understand. It's lacking the photos to support what a Perlin is or whatever it is.
Making Survey Reports Accessible
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I would say it's
00:16:05
Speaker
It's kind of half and half. So there are a lot of reports which are actually, I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot here, but sometimes too simplistic because they've not actually met particular standards in terms of what's required of particularly level two or level three. And if I think about the kind of elevation of surveys, so at level one,
00:16:35
Speaker
you would probably think, well, that does need to be basic in terms of what it says and what it delivers. And arguably that's true, that level three should be equally accessible to all clients. And what I tend to find is that the higher the survey level or survey equivalent, the more technical content and the more technical jargon is actually used. So if I think about, you know, in the last month in particular, I've seen
00:17:02
Speaker
you know, the concept of thermal bridging U values, HWSC, you know, what does that mean to people? What is a U value? What is HSWC, you know, hot water storage cylinder? Sorry, I'm getting them back, backwards, so HWSC like. So, you know, it's those types of things where just because you're delivering maybe a level three report doesn't mean
00:17:30
Speaker
that your content should be more complicated or more complex. So particularly for surveyors actually delivering level three reports, I would say to you, you know, go through your standard, in fact, everyone, but go through your standard phrases and really kind of have a look at their key terms, key concepts and key phrases, which actually kind of aren't accessible by
00:17:57
Speaker
by lapis and who doesn't necessarily know the components of property and or defects associated with them. Yeah it's interesting because you also forget
00:18:08
Speaker
how jargon and common terms to yourself are actually alien to somebody else. It's the same for us with software. We're trying to describe certain things. You have to take your certain hats off and go, actually, that's not going to make sense to somebody else. And you need to break it down a bit more. But we do the same thing with self-reflection. It's from looking at the system and how it's set up. We have people come in and review it from a third party perspective and make sure it's doing what it should do. So it's important. It's the only way of
00:18:35
Speaker
knowing how you're performing and the world moves on in terms of the context you're working in. So yeah, I'm completely all for it. Yeah, I suppose the higher the level, the more jargon. The only other thing I was thinking about on that is what is it that you should be putting in then to a high level report that you're not putting into a level one, for example, a lower level that's not, if it's not jargon. So how do you then provide that better detailed report without
00:19:04
Speaker
You can provide the detail, but I think, and by all means use those different key terms, concepts, you know, but what you need to be doing is actually supplementing that with, I hesitate to use the word, but almost like a glossary, you know, if you are talking about thermal bridging, explain what that actually is. If you're actually talking about rising damp, whilst it's, you know, clear and obvious to us as practicing surveyors,
00:19:34
Speaker
does your average layperson actually know what that rising dump actually stems from and what that actually means for your property? So it's not about omitting those key terms and concepts, it's about making sure that if they are there, that they are explained appropriately and meeting standards at the same time.
00:19:55
Speaker
I think my last question then on the auditing aspect, just back on the sort of how often should you do it? If someone's working with you around getting their reports checked, should they do it once a year, twice a year or more regularly than that?
Benefits of Monthly Independent Audits
00:20:08
Speaker
What's the appropriate level? I mean, I don't really have a
00:20:15
Speaker
I mean, what is appropriate, like I could say to you, well, every week, you know, but the reality is, is that people can't don't want to do it every week. And, you know, every month is typically what I have clients actually do. And that might be, that might be for, you know, a continual period of time, it might be for a shorter period of time. And the reality is, is, you know, cost of living, things change, you know, but
00:20:44
Speaker
If you are, in particular, if you are a solo surveyor, I would say, you know, at least monthly is a good way to get yourself onto a kind of positive trajectory in terms of delivering quality assessments, sorry, quality assessed survey reports. Yeah. Because like I mentioned a little bit earlier, doing ad hoc isn't something that I particularly am keen to do because
00:21:14
Speaker
I wouldn't want a surveyor saying, you know, I've had my reports checked by project three and they're, you know, high quality, whereas actually it's just one check in one, you know, snapshot of time, much like a survey, you need to have it done on a continual basis really. But yeah, in answer to your question, if you really are picking out a timeframe, I would say, say monthly is beneficial. Okay, so around the external order aspects versus doing it yourself,
00:21:45
Speaker
I know some surveyors rightly say will put high quality reports on their websites or in emails that go out to customers, but are there considerations around when you can say it's a high quality report or are there USPs or things you can do to list that as a USP properly?
Proving Report Quality with Evidence
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, so well, I mean, so my
00:22:07
Speaker
one of the kind of facets to my work is that actually, if you do get quality assessed on a monthly basis, then you do have access to my kind of quality assessment badge, which you can actually pop on your website and then in your email signature and things. But I think that's a real kind of bugbear, I think, for the industry, because I do see, like yourself, a lot of surveyors on there
00:22:35
Speaker
websites will put, we deliver high quality reports, but they don't actually evidence how they've established that. So whilst I'm not saying that their reports aren't of high quality, the question is, okay, well, where have they actually got that from? And specifically around that, great kind of client reviews do not necessarily equate
00:23:04
Speaker
to high quality survey reports that meet standards. So if you think about a client, I mean, Matt, just a question to you, how many, this might backfire, but how many times in your life have you actually moved? In terms of buying a house? Yeah. Yeah, in terms of purchase, I haven't. So I've not gone down the route of having a port. My brother has, I've seen his. Okay.
00:23:29
Speaker
Okay, so if that is something that you choose to do, or whatever, you know, in terms of your age, and how many times you'll have seen a home survey report, you'll have seen one report across the period of your lifetime, and you won't actually have seen it against, or comparable to other survey reports, either. So, you know, if you if you think about clients that typically move, you know, every
00:23:56
Speaker
10 plus years I think there was a report out back in when was it like 2017 2019 that said most people.
00:24:04
Speaker
move every 23 years, I think it was or something crazy like that. Clients don't actually know what good looks like. They might be happy with your report, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you've actually met the required standards associated with that. I can't remember if I mentioned earlier, but templates might imply the same quality.
00:24:32
Speaker
I can kind of tell you from what I see, I see templates which vary, sorry, templates of the same, sorry, reports, back to exact reports delivered in the same template, but varying vastly in terms of the quality in them. So in terms of when surveyors are actually claiming
00:24:55
Speaker
high quality reports on websites or on any kind of marketing material, I would get them to really kind of review that and see how can they actually evidence that their reports are high quality. Yeah, it's a very fair point actually, because high quality, there is no benchmark for people to compare high quality of one person versus another in terms of that statement. It's, you know, other than it's an RACS,
00:25:25
Speaker
level two, level three home survey, which again is only a minimum and they don't necessarily know all the internet's about that. But I suppose that ties in with other industries, but you're right. But being able to say it's quality assessed by third parties, give more weight to the argument then and therefore more justification in charging a high fee ultimately. Yeah, yeah.