Inspection and test plans, for the people who actually do the work

An ITP is the one document you can’t write from memory. Every line in it comes out of a specification somebody sent you.

That’s worth sitting with, because it explains most of what’s frustrating about them. A method statement you can write from experience — you’ve done the job, you know the sequence, you know where it goes wrong. An inspection and test plan is different in kind. It’s a list of the moments in that sequence when work stops until somebody checks it, and each of those moments has to be traced to a clause: which standard, which test, what number the result has to hit, who signs, and what happens if they don’t. None of that is in your head. It’s in a specification, a set of drawings, a client quality plan, and usually three documents that contradict each other.

So you open a spreadsheet, and you go through the spec line by line, and it takes an evening. Then the design changes and you do it again.

This page covers what goes in one, the vocabulary that trips people up, who signs what, and what to do about the evening.

What an ITP is for

Contractually, it’s the agreement about when work gets checked. Practically, it’s the thing that decides whether you can pour on Tuesday.

The main contractor’s quality plan sits above it and says how quality is managed on the job. Your ITP says what happens on your work packages — reinforcement, formwork, concrete, drainage, earthworks, whatever you’re actually being paid for. It names each activity, the inspection or test that applies to it, the standard or clause it’s judged against, the acceptance criteria, who does the checking, what evidence gets kept, and at what point the work is allowed to carry on.

When it’s right, nobody notices it. When it’s wrong, you find out on the day, with a concrete wagon booked.

The vocabulary, plainly

These four get muddled constantly, including by people who should know better, and the difference is the difference between a delay and a very expensive delay.

Hold point

Work stops. It does not restart until the named party has attended, inspected and signed. No signature, no progress — and if you carry on anyway you’re exposed, because you’ve built over the evidence. Reinforcement before a pour is the classic one.

Witness point

The named party is invited and given notice. If they don’t turn up within the notice period, you proceed and record that you gave notice. The notice period is the whole substance of a witness point, and it’s the thing people forget to write down.

Surveillance or review point

Somebody monitors or reviews records. Work doesn’t stop.

Notification period

How much warning you give. Usually 24 or 48 hours, sometimes five working days for a third-party inspector or the client’s engineer. Get this wrong and a hold point becomes a week.

Two more worth knowing. ITC — inspection and test certificate, the record that a check actually happened and passed. And the checksheet: the ITP says a check must occur; the checksheet is what the person does the checking on. One is the plan, the other is the record. An ITP with no route to a signed record is an ITP that will fail an audit while being entirely correct.

What goes in one

A workable ITP has a row per activity and, at minimum, these columns:

• Activity or work element — tied to the work package, not to a generic trade
• Reference — the specification clause, standard or drawing it comes from
• Inspection or test — what’s actually done
• Acceptance criteria — the number, tolerance or stated condition. “Satisfactory” is not acceptance criteria
• Frequency — every pour, every batch, every 500m², once
• Point type — hold, witness, surveillance
• Responsibility — yours, the main contractor’s, the client’s engineer’s, a third party’s
• Notification period — where the point type needs one
• Record — the ITC, test certificate, delivery ticket or signed checksheet
• Sign-off — who signs, and space for the date

The two columns that get skipped are the two that matter. Reference, because without it nobody can check the plan is right, and an auditor asking “where does that come from?” is a very bad conversation to have without an answer. And acceptance criteria, because a check with no number is not a check — it’s an opinion with a signature under it.

Who signs what

Depends on the point and the contract, but the shape is usually:

Your own supervisor or engineer signs the work as ready and complete. Your quality representative signs the check. The main contractor’s engineer signs the hold points they’ve reserved. The client’s representative or an independent inspector signs the ones reserved to them — and on infrastructure work there’ll be points reserved to a third party that neither you nor the main contractor can release.

The rule that saves arguments: whoever holds the point releases it, and nobody else. If your ITP lets your own supervisor sign off a client hold point, the ITP is wrong, no matter how good it looks.

Why templates only get you part of the way

You can download a concrete ITP in ten seconds. Plenty of decent free ones exist and there’s nothing wrong with using one to see the shape.

The problem is what a template can’t contain. Your acceptance criteria come from this specification. Your hold points come from this client’s quality plan and this main contractor’s amendments. Your test frequencies come from this concrete spec and this mix design. A downloaded ITP is a different project with your name at the top, and every line has to be checked against your own documents anyway — which is the work you were trying to avoid.

That’s the honest limit of a template. It gives you the columns. It can’t give you the content, because the content is in the paperwork you were sent.

Doing it without the evening

This is the part where I should tell you what we built, so: we build Stathia, and it’s the reason this page exists.

Stathia’s AI ITP author builds an ITP from your specification — and can pull one out of an existing document, if you’ve been issued something and need it in a form you can work with. It reads what you were actually sent rather than asking you to describe the job, which matters, because describing the job is the work. Then the plan runs on the platform: the checks go out to whoever’s doing them, ITC sign-off happens on a phone at the point of inspection, and the records land against the work package instead of in somebody’s photos.

The draft is a draft. It says so on its face. A competent person reviews it, corrects it and signs it — the same as any other document that carries your company’s name and somebody’s safety. Anything that suggests otherwise is selling you a problem, and this industry has enough of those.

The ITP module is on every plan, including the entry one. Full AI authoring in volume starts at Professional. Prices are per project rather than per user, which we did on purpose — your headcount moves week to week and your projects don’t, and charging you for putting your whole crew on the system is a strange way to encourage anyone to do the right thing.

What Stathia doesn’t do

No BIM — the model lives with your designer and your main contractor. No programme management. No main-contractor project controls: no portfolio cost-value reconciliation, no supply-chain dashboards, no procurement suite. That software exists, it’s good, and it’s built for the company above you.

This one’s built for you.