Well written expert’s reports are generated and drafted in the expert’s head as he or she does other things – walking the dog, sitting in a meeting, driving here or there.\u00a0 It’s a form of brain storming.<\/p>\n
For certain, critical passages in a report – e.g., the opinion, are often developed in this way. \u00a0Then\u00a0thought\u00a0out and refined on “paper” – the word processor today.<\/p>\n
At times any scrap of paper that’s handy will do to capture sudden insight into the data from a forensic investigation.\u00a0 Then expressed and refined\u00a0later on\u00a0a word processor.\u00a0 I’m sure you’ve all had this experience in your respective fields.<\/p>\n
I go through this process all the time in writing my forensic reports.\u00a0 It’s done best if it’s allowed to\u00a0take a number of days, sometimes weeks.\u00a0 I’m nervous and suspicious of quickly written and issued expert`s reports.<\/p>\n
The wordsmiths amongst you will\u00a0appreciate this approach.\u00a0 You know you get better reports in your work when you are able to allow this process to take place.<\/p>\n
I thought of this process in the last couple of\u00a0days as I was finishing a forensic engineering report.\u00a0\u00a0The report was on the\u00a0reviewing of pieces of information from different documents, visual assessments on site, and\u00a0interviews of\u00a0others.\u00a0 It was a grind\u00a0for a time trying to pull the data together, to find reason and meaning in the lot.<\/p>\n
Then the dots connected in my head between different bits of data and the cause of the failure jumped out at me.\u00a0 I quickly got it\u00a0down on “paper”, thought it through some more, refined the additional thoughts that were generated –\u00a0and then stood back and felt good that it had finally come together.\u00a0 I thought afterwards how I was\u00a0thinking on\u00a0“paper”.\u00a0 (Ref. 1).<\/p>\n
This process also characterizes my blogging which, a little aside, has also improved my forensic report writing.\u00a0 The need to be exact is common to both.\u00a0\u00a0My thinking develops\u00a0in the same way both in\u00a0my head and on the blog template – the “paper”.<\/p>\n
What’s great about technology today is every\u00a0revision, all the editing, all the jumping around on “paper”\u00a0is recorded in the WordPress program I use for blogging.\u00a0 I can revisit a past revision made days earlier and way down the list of revisions and tweak some more and put back in\u00a0my blog.<\/p>\n
The “tracking changes” feature possible in a Word document does\u00a0the same thing.\u00a0 It allows you to\u00a0capture all your expressed thinking on “paper”\u00a0allowing you to go back, resurrect a revision, refine and tweak it some more and get it right.<\/p>\n
This thinking on “paper”\u00a0is\u00a0quite satisfying.\u00a0 I know it’s resulting in\u00a0better\u00a0forensic reports for all concerned and likely, in some way,\u00a0more thorough\u00a0forensic investigations.\u00a0 You can’t prepare a\u00a0well written\u00a0report and formulate a reliable opinion unless you’ve carried out a thorough forensic engineering investigation.<\/p>\n
References<\/strong><\/p>\n Well written expert’s reports are generated and drafted in the expert’s head as he or she does other things – walking the dog, sitting in a meeting, driving here or there.\u00a0 It’s a form of brain storming. For certain, critical … Continue reading \n