In a survey we ran with the Civil Contractors Federation, 86% of engineers and supervisors said they spend five hours a week or more on QA and ITP admin. A lot of that time goes on rebuilding a record after the fact. In civil the record is what releases the claim, so that rebuild is not admin. It is your own money waiting on paperwork.
ITPs get filled in back at the caravan at the end of the job, off memory and a camera roll, and every box gets a tick. This isn't a people problem. The crew knows its job and the work is almost certainly fine. But the ITP is the plan the evidence hangs on, and by the end of the job the evidence is memory.
In civil, the hold point gates the claim
A hold point is where work stops until someone signs. Nothing proceeds past it, and where the claim is QA-gated, nothing gets certified either. That makes the ITP a commercial document as well as a quality one. It is the schedule your progress claim gets assessed against.
Whoever assesses your claim doesn't care what you have. They care what you can put in front of them. A photo on a phone and a signed sheet in the ute both exist. Neither is attached to the check it belongs to, so at month-end someone rebuilds them into the shape the claim needs, and the claim waits while they do.
"Our site teams are focussed on delivering the works to programme and to succeed, we must complete our quality documentation as the work proceeds."
Cameron Hyndman, National Lead for Digital Engineering, Downer
What ITP software has to do
Four things, and all of them are about when the record gets made rather than how it looks.
Capture has to happen at the work face. The check gets completed on a phone or a tablet where the work is, against the specific check and lot rather than into a job folder, with photos and measurements attached to the checkpoint they belong to. It has to work with no coverage, because plenty of civil sites and precast yards have none, so the record is made on the device and syncs when the signal returns.
Sign-off has to be digital and in sequence, with an audit trail of who approved what and when, instead of a hold point chased by phone and email.
The report has to assemble itself. Not a folder someone compiles at month-end, but the claim-ready document built out of what was already captured.
"They know exactly how we're tracking and if we're on programme. Our last progress claim was 900 pages long, because it had a copy of every single trench we worked on, with photos and comments attached."
Jeff Wright, Operations Manager, AE Smith
And the record has to still be there when someone questions it. Every respondent in our survey had rework in the past twelve months from falling behind on QA, so someone will. That is where the cost of a lagging record lands. The record lives apart from your ERP and your scheduling system, exportable in full and yours to keep.
Engineered products: the proof leaves with the unit
All of that rests on one idea. The record travels with the work. In civil the work is a lot and a check, so the evidence attaches to those. In a factory it is a single unit, so it attaches to that.
So the ITP does the same job with a different thing attached to it. It is the QA plan the per-unit record gets built against, and what you capture travels with the element, the board or the member into someone else's build. Two years later, in a dispute, what settles it is whether the proof left with the unit or stayed behind in a tray.
See it on your own ITP
If your ITPs are being finished at the end of the job, a better template won't fix it. What changes the outcome is moving the capture to the work face.
Bring us your worst ITP. We'll show you the same one captured at the work face, signed off at the hold point, and assembled into a claim-ready record without anyone rebuilding it at month-end.
ITP software: the questions people ask
What is an ITP in construction?
An ITP, or Inspection and Test Plan, sets out for a defined scope of work what will be inspected or tested, against which specification or standard, at what point in the sequence, who signs it off, and what evidence gets recorded. It usually marks hold points, where work stops until sign-off, and witness points, where a party is notified but work continues.
What does ITP software do?
ITP software holds your inspection and test plans digitally and records evidence against them as the work happens. In practice that means completing the check on a phone or tablet at the work face, attaching photos and measurements to the specific checkpoint, capturing hold-point sign-off with an audit trail of who approved what and when, and generating the QA report from what was captured rather than assembling it by hand later.
What is the difference between an ITP and a checklist?
The ITP is the plan. It defines what must be verified and by whom across a scope of work, and it is usually a contract deliverable. A checklist is the instrument used to capture evidence against that plan at a single point of work. One ITP typically has many checklists completed against it.
Does ITP software work offline?
It needs to. Civil sites and remote yards routinely have no coverage. CONQA captures offline on the device and syncs when connectivity returns, so the record is still made at the point of work.