Field Trip Reports
Field trip reports are sometimes required whenever people must leave their usual place of work in order to complete a task or project somewhere else, such as working a field project, working on a client's site, attending a seminar or workshop.As with incident reports, field trip reports can be written as memorandums. These memorandums can be written by whomever made the trip, or was in charge of the team who went on the trip. That said, they can be written in first person ("I"), but can also use "we" if a team was involved.
A field trip report contains the following compartments:
- Summary.
- Background. This compartment tells the purpose of the trip. It also tells who gave the authorization for the trip and lists details, such as people, locations, and dates.
- Trip Activities (this was the events compartment in our incident report). In a field trip report, the trip activities compartment has four sub-compartments:
- What the report writer set out to do.
- What was done.
- What couldn't be done and why.
- What else was done.
- Outcome. The outcome compartment tells about the results of the trip, plus what additional work or actions must be completed or taken. It should also suggest what's necessary, as well as who should accomplish it.
Some field trip reports are short and don't require more than a page. However, if the field trip report you are writing is going to be longer, it's a good idea to use headings to better break down and organize the information.
For example, in the background compartment, you might want to add the following headings that give details about the assignment:
- Purpose
- Authority
- Personnel
- Location
- Duration
In the Trip Activities compartment, you might want to use these headings:
- Completed Assigned Work
- Encountered Problems
- Other Work Done
These headings can be used in the Outcome compartment:
- Achieved Results
- Further Required Actions
If you're writing a field trip report to cover attendance at a conference or meeting, you might want to use these sub-compartments for the Trip Activities compartment:
- What the conference was supposed to cover
- What you hoped to learn or find out
- What sessions you attended, and why
- What you gained by attending these sessions
- What you learned from talking to others at the conference
- What activities you attended while at the conference
Below are excerpted paragraphs from a draft of a field trip report. Read the paragraph, then choose the compartment in which the paragraph belongs.
- Seven computers were installed successfully. This included monitor, tower, keyboard, and mouse. However, the new department printer was not installed, due to damage incurred during shipping from the manufacturer.
- ___ Background
- ___ Trip Activities
- ___ Outcome
- We were instructed to install seven new workstations in the customer service department of the Burlington location. The IT department requires that all company-wide workstations are upgraded after five years. According to our records, the workstations in the Burlington location were 5 ½ years old at the time of replacement. We drove to the Burlington location on July 6 and returned on July 9 to finish the job.
- ___ Background
- ___ Trip Activities
- ___ Outcome
- We will arrange to have a new printer shipped to the Burlington location next month. One of our field technicians will install the printer in the customer service department.
- ___ Background
- ___ Trip Activities
- ___ Outcome
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