Is It Useful?

Once you have made your checklist readable, it's time to consider if it's useful. Useful to whom? Let's consider your audience. The person writing a checklist may not be the same person as the one conducting the inspections, and they have different goals: the writer wants meaningful data that can lead to structural business change, but the inspector wants to document and communicate.

This can lead to two big problems, both of which can make the checklist useless. On the one hand, the data-interested person tends to overly define items or add too many items. Their teams are more likely to pencil whip, make mistakes, find workarounds to the specificity, or just not complete them -- leading to untrustworthy data. But on the other hand, field staff tend to write simpler checklists that rely heavily on individual expertise and knowledge to fill in the gaps. But these kinds of checklists just don't have enough specificity to make meaningful insights.

So, for a checklist to be truly useful, it must both provide good data and be a good communication tool. Which means it must be:

1. Readable (see Part 1, "Writing a Construction Checklist is Easy, Right?")

2. Well Organized (read on!)

3. Strategically Flexible (see Part 3, coming next)

Let's focus on how checklists can be "Well Organized."

First, consider your data, even at the lowest level. Every single checkpoint can be scrutinized by asking of it: "If you were the only thing failed would that provide insight?" For instance, if you have a checkpoint for "Appliances," a failure could imply a supplier issue, or an installer issue. If they're the same company, this checkpoint might be useful, because you have an organization to go to for change. But you may want more information about whether it's a dishwasher, range, or fridge. Write to the level of detail that you want to take action on.

Keep checklist length reasonable and combine items as needed. People like grouping similar things together, because it optimizes the mental effort it takes to complete things. Any checklist with more than 20 items without groupings is too much to scan and parse mentally. Break it down. Make it easier on yourself and your crew. A 30-point checklist on "Framing" could easily be two 15-point checklists on "Non-structural Framing" // "Structural Framing," or "Wood Framing" // "Steel Framing," or "Panelized Framing" // "Site-built Framing," or "Framing: Plan Adherence" // "Framing: Installation."

Once you start breaking things down, you now need to think about how to group them. Use groupings that are clear and provide actionable insights. Inspectors need good organization so they don't get confused about where to record information. If your inspectors are confused, you're not getting good data. For instance, a home inspector may have a "Master Bathroom" checklist, a "Plumbing" checklist, and a "Trim" checklist. So if they observe a missing escutcheon plate in the master bathroom, where do they log it? This example surfaces another difficult challenge as well. To build clarity in that checklist, you must choose between organizing your data by room or by category. Mixing both together will always create opportunity for overlap -- but neither is perfect for what you need. Each situation is different.

This is why you should choose a consistent organizational methodology that's good for your process. In the above example, inspectors need checklists organized so they can walk into a room and check off that room, but construction managers need the items organized by trades. So what do we do? Well, most organizations have some sort of compromise list that looks like "Kitchen, Dining Room, HVAC, Plumbing." But what happens when you have a "plumbing" checklist and a "primary bathroom" checklist? Do you expect the inspector to get both of these out simultaneously, or do you treat the plumbing checklist like the "[non-primary bath] plumbing" checklist? It's a tough challenge.

The goal should always be that the checklists are easily understood (i.e. inspectors use them in a predictable manner), and they provide useful insights.

Stay tuned for Part 3 in this series, "Strategically Flexible."