Dear Client, Thank you using our inspection services and were grateful for you intrusting your inspection to us for completion. The process is detailed below and may be more complicated that at first you might think. However, as you will appreciate each individual inspection is tailored to the particular requirements of the customer and items under review. The timeframes to completing such inspections can be variable and sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly how long it will take to complete the report following the inspection been completed. Sometimes other information will need to be gained which may not necessarily be immediately evident when we have had the discussion with you at the beginning of the inspection process. Also it has to be considered that the outcome also cannot be guaranteed we will provide a balanced report in line with the court procedure rules CPR 35 and PD 35 however this does not necessarily mean that the outcome will be in your favour and no guarantees are provided. We will provide a balanced report which are often used in legal action and as such hopefully will be of benefit. However sometimes the outcome is not what you will be expecting and although this maybe unfortunate we have no alternative but to tell the truth as it is a cornerstone of the company’s profile. The fee you have being quoted for the inspection has many different aspects which make up the inspection and the reporting system some of which are detailed below. As you will be able to see from the table below some considerable time goes into each individual inspection and the average physical time allocated to each inspection is around eight hours for all the stages to be completed. The average time in the process is 5.5 - 6.5 hours which often surprises clients. Once again I thank you for your trust in completing the inspection required. Tony Farndale Director of Engineering.

We allow approximately 1 hour travelling time to the
inspection in the costs quoted

The engineer from his notes will start the process of
preparing the report and will either write the report
up (draft) or dictate a verbally report (draft) onto our
dedicated electronic system. They can also discuss
the report with other engineers to add further
context and assist in forming an opinion. The
dictation process often takes between 20 and 130
minutes.

At ACE before any report is submitted it has to be
reviewed by senior technical management to
confirm that the report is in alignment with what the
client required but also that technical and legal
aspects have been accounted for in the report
completed. During this process if it’s decided that
some aspects of not been fully attended to the
report will be referred back to the engineer for
further attention redrafting and then to go through
the technical checking for a second time. As reports
are often used in a legal context the reports must be
accurate, robust and provide all the information that
would be required for a judge or ombudsman to be
able to make a decision. This process often takes
between one and two hours.

Once all checks and procedures have been
completed the report is finally submitted to the client
for their perusal and potential legal action if required.