What is positive reporting?

Positive reporting is an optional alternative to reporting on the system which, as well as showing those areas of a site where action is required, also makes comment on those areas where potential risks exist which are being adequately managed and under control.

Where positive reporting is required for a report, the assessment is listed as a series of ‘controls’. The assessor will need to indicate when uploading their report what controls are applicable for a site from a list ; for example a site with no sprinkler systems would need no measures in place to look after these.

In identifying any actions/recommendations for improvement each of these recommendations or actions is then linked to one of these controls. By definition, any recommendation which is linked to an action will be defined as ‘uncontrolled’, whereas the remainder would be defined as ‘controlled’.

For ‘uncontrolled’, these are split into three sub-sections as follows:
No Progress – this is for actions where no steps have been taken to implement the recommendation.
Progress – an update has been made to the action which marks it as being in progress – for example the building manager is requesting authorisation on costs, or awaiting a response from a sub-contractor.
Complete – the action has been completed and is no longer uncontrolled.

NB. It is possible for more than one action to be tied to the same control.

For ‘controlled’, this is split as follows:
Initial – this is a count of all potential risks on site on the day of inspection which were deemed as being adequately controlled.
Live – this is a count of all controls on the inspection where either no additional action was required, or there was a recommendation for improvement which has since been marked as complete.