How To Prepare A Good Inspection & Test Plan Part – 1

In the construction, there are several kinds of documents that

you will encounter and produce as well, such as method
statement, checklist, forms of different kinds, but the Inspection
& Test Plan or ITP is the most important that you’ll have to make
first. Why? Because ITP is the book of each work on your project.

In my first job in Dubai, I have seen an ITP that consist of all the
work inspections. It was like compacted in one document. It was
like a general ITP, but it is not really challenging, the best ITP
that I would discuss here is that an ITP of each work like ITP for
Excavation Works, ITP for Concrete Works, ITP for Block Works
etc.

If you are a newly assigned quality engineer in an ongoing project

and you found out that they were not producing ITP, it will be a
mess project. How are you going to monitor inspection stages,
the test, the acceptance criteria, the references, etc? Without
ITP, believe me or not if you’ll not make it, you are going to mess
out the whole project.
ITP will serve as a tracking device. After the first inspection,
then you’ll go to the next. By the way, the
activity description that you’ll going to write in the ITP that will
be the title in your Inspection Request. That is why you will not
really lost in your inspections. Remember that…

Now here I am going to show you how easy to prepare an ITP? I

have written about “Understanding About Inspection & Test
Plan” for you to understand how an ITP is made.
Here are the steps to do “How to prepare an Inspection & Test
Plan.” And you could follow and apply to your project.

1. Read Specification.

When you want to start writing the ITP, you must firstly read
the specification of the work that you are going to make an ITP
for. Like “Block Works” you should read carefully the
wholespecification, not only once, but twice or much better,
several times because there are terms sometimes that you have
to understand well. During your reading, you can highlight the
important terms so that when you come back you can
immediately track it.
The specification is your basis for writing ITP.

2. Drawing, Method Statement & Material Submittal.

Make sure that the drawing is approved, if not, make sure that it
is being submitted to the consultant because that will be
incorporated in the ITP as preliminaries. The same with
the method statement and material submittal, especially
material submittal, there are some works that you’ll going to use
the technical data of a material and you are going to pick
someacceptance criteria’s from there. You will learn later in the
next article how to identify and write the “Acceptance Criteria.”

3. Define Activity Description.

You could ask yourself by saying “What could I inspect in the first
place?” In the specificationthat you’ve just read many times and
perhaps you’d found this word “preparation or examination” that
could be a hint of an activity that you are going to inspect first
before the succeeding activity proceeds. You can see
the sample of this article Understanding About Inspection & Test
Plan.
Second, the word “Installation or Completed work” that would be
your succeeding inspection. Like for example in the activity
of block works, before the placing of a first level onto the slab,
inspection shall be done first for surface preparation. So your
activity description will be “Installation of block.”
And third, if you find the word “Test” this one will be another an
activity that you should write. If the activity, for example, is block
works, then that’s usually written in the specification “test of
block sample” or sometimes “test of mortar.”

4. Test or Inspection Performed.

Let’s take this Inspection & Test Plan Sample, and see under the
Test or Inspection Performed column. You will just write
“Approval” for the documents that to be included such as
the method statement, material submittal and inspection and
test plan.
And write “Visual” for the material and activity to be inspected.

5. Stage or Frequency.
We’ll just jump off to the material to be inspected because there
is no certain frequency for the documents or submittal. So we’ll
go to the material and define what is the frequency. Once the
material arrives on site then you may write the frequency “Every
material arrive on site” or just simply “Material Arrival on Site.”

If you have mock-up sample for blockwork activity then your

frequency there is going to be “1 wall panel (6 meters).”
In the activity of surface preparation and setting out your
frequency there would be “Prior to laying of every course.” The
last activity is “Completed blockwork” then your frequency there
would be “Every completed panel/area.”

6. Code or Specification.
Under this column you will just write the corresponding code
or specification to the “Activity Description” you’ve written. The
Clause from the particular area of the specification. Like, for
example “Specification Section 07300 Clause 1.0” is where the
word “Surface Preparation” activity was written.

7. Acceptance Criteria.

The acceptance criteria are the most important part of your ITP,
why? Because this is your basis how you are going to approve or
accept the material arrive and work done on site respectively. So
think deeply about this item.
In the “Blockwork” activity sample, let us say for
example materials. What will be your acceptance criteria? No
thinking twice, it would be “Approved Material Submittal as Code
A/B or 1/2.” You will then write it in the row of material in your ITP
under acceptance criteria column.

How about the “Setting out and surface preparation” activity? In

the setting out activity, when you hear “setting out” it can
immediately pop-up into your mind that it is made by a surveyor,
therefore your acceptance criteria there would be a survey
report, make sure the surveyor has signed it off before you
submit to the Engineer/Consultant.

The “Surface Preparation” activity, how do you accept that? It

could be surface is clean, surface is chipped-off etc. But that
sentences are most likely to be written in the Checklist. So, the
most general term would be “No unsatisfactory conditions.”

8. Inspection or Verification.

Under the inspection or verification, there are three parties

involved which they are Contractor,Consultant or Engineer and
Client or Employer. Now, there are corresponding responsibilities
or task these three parties are involved in and to be represented
by E as execution, W as witness point and H as hold point. First is
Contractor which normally the party who will execute the
project. Second, the consultant or engineer who will commonly
checked the work or material, the inspection criteria will be
either witness or hold.
The client or employer will most commonly have a hold
point status which you can see the difference of witness and
hold points in this article.
Now! How do you identify the inspection criteria such as witness
point, hold point, surveillance and record?

Let’s say for example, we have “mock-up of blockwork/CMU” it is

written in the specificationyou’ve just read this line “Approval
of sample panel is for texture, size, colour of masonry units; and
other materials and construction qualities specifically approved
by Engineer or Consultant.” So you will place H as hold point
under the Engineer column and the Employer or Client then would
be W as witness point. But sometimes the specification will be
superseded when the Employer will decide to check the mock-
up sample.

“Surveillance” is usually referred to the Employer, let’s have an

example again, if there is “material arrival shall be checked by
Engineer” then you will write H as hold point, so the hint are the
words “checked by Engineer” and then if it doesn’t mention
“checked by Employer” so then you will write S as surveillance.

“Record” is referred to Engineer when it comes to the approval of

documents. So therefore you will write R as record under
Engineer in the row of preparation of documents (ITP, Method
Statement).