Helping you Make Informed decisions..

Inspection Process

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.

1) Processing  Time

Once we receive an instruction from a client the
processing will start with our internal office and staff
who will check to make sure that vehicles available
and wherever possible make sure that the vehicle is
dismantled in a state where we can complete the
inspection. During the process the client may
receive emails on a regular basis if any difficulties
are found. We do however work on a send and
forget system and as such you should only receive
notification if you are having some difficulties.
Estimated time one hour.

2) Travelling Time

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

3) Inspection Visit

The inspection includes physical examination,
reviewing of any documents and discussions at the
time. We do not carry out any dismantling.
Dismantling will need to take place before or after
the inspection if a second visit is required a discount
will be applied. We will make every effort to
complete a visit on the first instance but to reduce
dismantling costs which may be un-necessary a
second inspection is sometimes required. The
inspection times are variable and note taking but
often take between 30 minutes and two hours.

4) Engineer writes up or dictates report.

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.

5) Report typing

The report is then typed by our dedicated typing
team to provide a professional document for both
legal and or ombudsman use. Most reports take
between one and three hours to type.

6) Report checking by senior technical
staff (second opinion).

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.


7) Final checking for punctuation and
spelling by qualified staff.

Once the engineering, technical and legal aspects
have been established in the report and are
confirmed to be correct the report finally is checked
for typographical errors spelling mistakes and
punctuation issues before the report is submitted. The report is sent back to the engineer for final approval.
This process often takes between one and two
hours.

8) The final phases submission of the report to the client.

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.