Certificate of Competence in Technical Report Writing

Reports are an important product of every technical process. A report represents the final product of a project and a poorly written report can undermine the work that has been completed, obscure important findings and potentially alienate stakeholders.    Writing and reading reports can be a time-consuming chore for the author, the person responsible for reviewing and authorising them and the recipient. Examples of poor reports include those that are poorly structured, those that contain too much or too little information, those peppered with grammatical errors and inconsistencies, and those that do not clearly explain the key outcomes.

The aim of this 2-day course is to provide guidance on effective communication through good technical report writing in acoustics.  The course will cover various approaches to structuring reports and provide a detailed overview of what the relevant sections would normally contain. It will emphasise the importance of presentation skills and competent data gathering and analysis.

The course should be useful particularly for early career employees in acoustics, and in science and engineering consultancies more generally, as well as for those in pollution control and environmental health practice where they may be required to product acoustic reports.   It is also relevant to anywhere that technical reporting both within and for outside organisations is important.

At the end of the course, delegates should be able to:

1. Plan the content and structure of a report;
2. Access and cite suitable background and reference materials;
3. Set out clearly the methods of measurement, analysis and assessment of results;
4. Identify and explain any deviations from prescribed measurement, calculation or assessment methods;
5. Explain how uncertainty has been considered and its possible impact on the overall outcome;
6. Present clearly the key outcomes and recommendations arising from the project.

After completing the first two days of the course, candidates will be provided with a case study with background brief, drawings, data and details of the measurement strategy, on which they will be expected to compile a concise technical report, to be submitted no more than 4 weeks after the course end date.

23-25 February 2026, held at KP Acoustics Research Labs in Southampton