Inspection reports and what follows them: the review, the letter and the repair proposal.

One sequence on all three desks. A person walks a riser room, a street or a roof. They write down what they saw, on a form, in an app or on a clipboard, and take photos. Back at the office someone turns that into a document for a reader who wasn't there: a building owner or the jurisdiction, a homeowner, a property manager. Every inspection your office has followed up left both halves on file, the field record and what went out, plus whatever came back later: a report sent back for fixes, an owner's appeal, a proposal rewritten or declined. Together they are the answer key.

The note made on site is the record. If an inspection ever ends up in a dispute, its weight comes from when and how it was written. Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) admits a business record made at or near the time by someone with knowledge, kept in the course of a regularly conducted activity, where making it was a regular practice, unless the other side shows the source or the way it was prepared isn't trustworthy. A summary rewritten later by someone who never saw the site fits those conditions less cleanly. So none of these drafts rewrites what the inspector wrote. They quote it, point at what looks missing or inconsistent, and leave any correction to the person who was there.

A photo has to be shown to be what it claims. Rule 901 asks for evidence that an item is what its proponent says it is, most simply testimony from a witness with knowledge, such as the inspector who took the picture. Rule 1001 counts an image stored in any form as a photograph, and treats a printout of electronic information as an original if it accurately reflects it. The files carry clues of their own. A camera's Exif data records DateTimeOriginal, the moment the image was taken, but until Exif 2.31 added the OffsetTime tags in 2016 the standard had no field for a time zone, and a file without them holds only a local clock time. So each draft compares a photo's date with the inspection date and flags a mismatch, a missing photo or a picture that may show the wrong riser, lot or roof area. What a photo proves stays with your people.

The originals stay exactly as they were. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), as amended in 2015, when electronically stored information that should have been preserved for expected or pending litigation is lost because a party didn't take reasonable steps to keep it, a court can order measures to cure the harm, and on a finding of intent to deprive it can presume the lost information was unfavorable, instruct the jury that way, or dismiss the case or enter a default. A fined homeowner, a building owner disputing a repair bill and a property manager questioning a roof warranty can each become that other party. So the test reads copies, writes its drafts to a separate review sheet, and edits, replaces or deletes nothing in your inspection app, your association software or your photo folders. None of this is legal advice.

What changes from desk to desk. The yardstick: an NFPA or state form and last year's readings on a fire report, a community's declaration, rules and fine schedule on a violation letter, the core log, the code and the manufacturer's warranty on a roof proposal. The reader: a building owner and often the authority having jurisdiction, a homeowner and sometimes a hearing committee, a property manager and the owner behind them. And the person who signs: the inspector, the community manager, the service manager. On every card the AI drafts and flags. It never certifies a report, finds that a violation happened, sets a fine, judges a roof or sends anything. The sample, the scoring rows and the one hard limit for each desk live on its own job page.