Friday, March 6, 2015

too much review/little review?

I was reading a simple long-term monitoring report by another consultant, and the level of review/non-review was...odd.

I don't expect much from a long-term monitoring report. It's a lot of boilerplate and "yep, nothing much is changing, just like the last 17 reports", and that's fine. But I came across a report that was decorated with four review signatures, including signatures of some high-level staff. And the report had a collection of typos, weird formatting (tables ending up illegible because they'd been shrunken down to the equivalent of 6-point font), and lousy interpretations of things like water level and contaminant contours.

Did any of the reviewers actually review the thing? I mean, sure, contour interpretations aren't earth-shattering, and I can just eyeball the numbers they're based on and mentally create my own if they're bogus. But illegible tables? Super-obvious typos? They're the sort of thing that it would take a reviewer (well, me anyway) about 5 minutes to scan through and flag for revision.

Reports that the one of the corporate officers and two technical experts is signing off on should at least look respectable to someone who glances through it.

No comments: