Crafting documents has always been a significant part of project management. Making detailed reports is not only useful, but also necessary in running the project meticulously. So, what is an onsite visit progress report? This report is a summary of the onsite visit progress activities in a project.
Keep reading to find the reasons why and when this report can come handy, plus we provide a FREE download of PMtips’ Onsite Visits Progress Report at the end.
The Purpose of the Onsite Visit Progress Report
Usually, the Onsite Visit Progress Report is not used because it is not meant for routine customer onsite visits. However, if you must go onsite to the customer for some corrective-type action, then it is entirely possible that a communication mechanism such as the Onsite Visit Progress Report may be your best way to get down in writing what you plan to do, what you actually accomplished and problems that were encountered. This will help justify what work you performed, the hours expended, etc. as you get further down the road and need to justify budget overages to your executive management and/or your customer.
This report can be very helpful to use when you need to take your team onsite in the middle of a the development phase to break through some barriers. It can be very helpful for you as well as your team to have the purposes and outcomes documented. Finally, it can be also useful for the customer, and the project management to see the progress in a separate document from the regular formal status report.
The Content
The outline of the Onsite Visit Progress Report is similar like any other report. The basic list of section may include:
- Project Scope/Overview/ Description
- Trip Objectives
- Progress
- Planned Activities
- Issues
- Comments
The most crucial sections are the progress chart, planned activities, and issues. Be sure to pay a special attention when writing these parts. Be specific, clear, and try to add as many important details as possible.
Things to Consider
This PMtips’ template may not be applicable to your project situation. We only had to use it a couple of times because, in general, the regular status report will usually suffice. This type of document is not really meant for routine customer onsite visits.
Personally, I would never use it for an onsite visit to kick off a particular phase of the project. You could, but I believe it would be overkill as that is just routine activities that are covered both by the project schedule and the project status report.
Final Thoughts
Any report can improve the development of the project. So, it is always a good idea to have prepared the Onsite Visits Progress Report even though you may never use it. Nevertheless, you can download this template for FREE.
Do you still have any questions? Post them in the comments section at the end. We will try to respond to all legitimate quarries as soon as possible.