Facility Inspection Form
The loss-control inspection an insurer, a broker or a risk manager fills in. It looks at property conservation and liability exposure rather than at maintenance, which means the question behind every line is not whether something is working but whether it could cause a claim.
- Thirty-four items across fire, water, security and liability
- Recommendations coded Critical, Required or Advisory
- Carried-over findings counted separately from new ones
- A renewal position, not just a list of observations
Facility Inspection Form
What could cause a claim
| # | FIRE PROTECTION | YES | NO | N/A |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Automatic fire detection throughout, monitored off site | |||
| 2 | Compartmentation intact, fire doors closing and unwedged | |||
| 3 | Hot work controlled by permit |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this facility inspection form is for
One inspection, and three readers who each use it for something different.
The insurer or underwriter
Fire protection first, then exposure. What you are pricing is the combination of what could start a loss and what would stop it, and the observation column matters more than the tick.
The broker or risk manager
You need the recommendations and their priority, because those are what you take back to the client. A Critical left open between visits is the line that costs cover or money.
The site or facilities manager
You get a concrete list rather than a judgment. Each finding has an exposure, a priority and a date, which is what makes it actionable rather than a report you file.
Whoever carries out the inspection
Thirty-four items and an observation against anything that is not a plain yes. A no with no note behind it is the thing that gets argued about at renewal.
Where loss control is read most closely
The items are common to most commercial property. What changes is which exposure dominates and how much a finding moves the premium. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- Commercial real estate
Multi tenant property, where the landlord carries the exposure created by trades they do not control.
Portfolio maintenance software - Retail and malls
Public access and stock concentration, so slips, trips and security sit alongside fire as the main claim sources.
Retail maintenance software - Healthcare
Continuity matters as much as damage, and escape of water in the wrong place is as serious as a fire in most buildings.
Healthcare maintenance software - Education
Large open sites with public access out of hours, where security and liability findings usually outnumber fire ones.
Campus maintenance software - Corporate facilities
Offices where the real exposure is escape of water above occupied floors rather than anything dramatic.
Corporate facilities software - FM service providers
Contracted sites, where the inspection is the evidence that a managing agent is controlling contractors and hot work.
FM service provider software
What a facility inspection form should contain
A facility inspection form is the loss-control inspection of a property, recording what could cause a claim rather than what needs maintenance. It covers fire protection, escape of water, weather and security exposure, and public and employee liability, then raises recommendations coded by priority with a date and an owner.
A. The sections that carry the weight
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Inspection details | The property, the date, who inspected it and why | The reason matters. A pre-renewal inspection is read differently from a routine one, and the register records which it was. |
| Property description | Construction, stories, area, occupancy and year built | Construction type drives most of what follows. The same finding on a masonry building and a timber-framed one is not the same finding. |
| Adjoining occupancies | What is next door and what it does | Routinely skipped and genuinely material. A great deal of fire exposure arrives from the building attached to yours rather than from anything inside it. |
| Reinstatement value | What it would cost to put the building back | The figure everything is set against. An estimate that has not been revisited in years is itself a finding. |
| Fire protection | Twelve items from detection and suppression to hot work control | The section an underwriter reads first. Detection, compartmentation and hot work are the three that most often change how a risk is priced. |
| Escape of water, weather and security | Ten items covering valves, insulation, leak detection, storm and intruder risk | Escape of water is the quiet one. It causes more claims than fire in most commercial portfolios and almost never gets the same attention. |
| Public and employee liability | Twelve items from slips and trips to statutory inspections and asbestos | The exposure created by people being in the building rather than by the building itself, and the one most likely to arrive as a claim years later. |
| The observation column | What was actually seen, beside each answer | A no on its own is unusable. The observation is what makes a finding defensible and what stops it being re-argued at the next visit. |
| Recommendations | Finding, exposure, priority, what to do, by when, closed | The output. Every recommendation names the exposure it addresses, which is what separates this from a list of things somebody did not like. |
| Priority coding | Critical, Required or Advisory, spelled exactly | Counted by the summary. Critical means act now rather than schedule, and the count of them is what drives the position at the end. |
| Outstanding from the previous inspection | What was raised last time and is still open | The most important number in the document, and the only one that describes behavior rather than condition. |
| Risk position and renewal | An overall rating and a renewal recommendation | Converts findings into a consequence. Yes with conditions is a real answer and is what most inspections with an open Critical produce. |
The carried-over count is the line that changes the conversation, and it is the one most inspection forms do not have. Eight recommendations raised at a visit is ordinary; every occupied building generates findings. Two of them being repeats from the previous inspection is not ordinary, because it says the findings are being received and not acted on. Underwriters read that as a statement about management rather than about the building, and it is the thing most likely to attach a condition to a renewal or move a premium. The second habit worth keeping is writing an observation against every answer that is not a plain yes. A tick in the no column tells a reader that something was absent; it does not say whether the sprinkler system is missing entirely or merely out of service for a week with a fire watch in place. Those are different risks, they attract different responses, and six months later nobody can reconstruct which one it was.
B. What it looks like filled in
The recommendation summary from one pre-renewal inspection. Eight findings is unremarkable, and two of the numbers here are not.
| Line | Count |
|---|---|
| Critical recommendations | 1 |
| Required recommendations | 4 |
| Advisory recommendations | 3 |
| Recommendations raised | 8 |
| Outstanding from the previous inspection | 2 |
| Closed since the last inspection | 5 |
Eight findings on an occupied building is normal. The single Critical and the two carry-overs are what the report is actually about. The Critical on this inspection was a fire door to a plant room wedged open, which is both trivial to fix and squarely in the compartmentation line an underwriter reads first. It is the kind of finding that costs nothing to close and a great deal to leave, because its presence says compartmentation is not being managed rather than that one door is faulty. The two carried over from the previous visit do more damage than the six new ones. New findings describe a building; repeated findings describe how the site responds to being told. Read against five closed since the last inspection, the picture is a site that acts on most things and has two it keeps not acting on, which is why the register's position for this visit is not a plain yes but yes with conditions.
Word for a version you want to put on your own letterhead or align with a particular insurer's wording, Excel for the one that counts recommendations by priority and holds an Inspection Register across visits, and PDF for the copy that gets carried round the building. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you carry out a facility inspection?
Work it in the order it is written, which runs from what could start a loss to what could injure somebody. Write an observation against anything that is not a plain yes. Six steps.
Record the property and what is next to it
Construction, stories, area, occupancy, hours and reinstatement value, then adjoining occupancies. That last field is the one people skip, and a surprising share of fire exposure comes from next door.
Work fire protection first
Detection and monitoring, suppression, compartmentation, fire stopping, means of escape, hot work control and electrical inspection. This is the section that gets read first, so it is the one to do while you are fresh.
Cover escape of water, weather and security
Shut-off valves, insulation, leak detection, roof and gutters, flood and storm exposure, alarms and perimeter. Escape of water causes more commercial claims than fire and gets a fraction of the attention.
Work the liability items
Slips and trips, external paving, lighting, handrails, contractor control, statutory inspections, asbestos and water hygiene. These are the exposures created by people being in the building.
Write an observation against every answer that is not a plain yes
A no with no note behind it cannot be acted on and cannot be defended later. The observation is what makes the difference between a system missing and a system temporarily out of service.
Raise recommendations, code them, then count the carry-overs
Each finding with its exposure, a priority of Critical, Required or Advisory, an action and a date. Then record what is still open from last time, because that number is what the risk position turns on.
A facility inspection form versus a facility inspection checklist
The two documents people mean by a facility inspection, and they are not the same job. One is looking for what could cause a claim, the other for what could hurt somebody today.
| Aspect | This inspection form | A facility inspection checklist |
|---|---|---|
| The question behind each line | What could cause a claim | What could cause harm right now |
| Who normally reads it | An insurer, broker or risk manager | The site team and whoever is responsible |
| How findings are graded | Critical, Required or Advisory | Often severity against likelihood |
| What it covers that the other does not | Reinstatement value, adjoining exposure | Task level hazards and safe systems |
| How often it runs | Annually, or before renewal | Routinely, often weekly or monthly |
| What it produces | A renewal position and conditions | Corrective actions and a hazard record |
Use this form when an insurer, broker or risk manager is the reader, and a hazard checklist when the site team is. The phrase facility inspection checklist gets used for both, which is why people arrive at one expecting the other. The practical test is what the output is for: if it ends in a renewal position and a set of conditions, it is loss control; if it ends in corrective actions scored by severity and likelihood, it is a safety walk and the safety inspection checklist is the better fit. Most occupied buildings need both, on different cycles, read by different people. Running only the safety walk is the more common gap, and it tends to be discovered at renewal.
When the template starts to feel limiting
The file is built for one property, inspected periodically. Four things start to hurt as soon as that is not the shape of the problem.
One file per inspection, per property
The carry-over count depends on somebody opening the last report. Across a portfolio, asking which properties have an open Critical means opening every file.
A recommendation date chases nobody
Every finding carries a by-when and nothing acts on it. Findings go quiet between visits, which is exactly how a new finding becomes a carry-over.
Photographs live somewhere else
Loss control is visual, and a wedged fire door is far more persuasive as an image than as a line of text. Those images end up in a phone or an email.
Closure is asserted, not evidenced
A finding is marked closed because somebody says so. There is nothing linking it to the work that actually fixed it, which is the first thing a challenged claim will ask for.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The inspection does not change. What changes is that a recommendation stays alive against the property until something actually closes it.
Audit Report Intelligence
Carry-overs are counted for you
Because findings live against the property rather than in a report, a recommendation still open at the next visit is identified automatically instead of depending on somebody rereading last year's file.
Work Order Intelligence
Closure is evidenced
A recommendation is closed by the job that fixed it, so the record shows what was done rather than only that somebody ticked it.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Dates act on their own
Each finding carries its own priority and due date, so a Critical that has not moved surfaces as an exception rather than waiting for the next inspection to notice.
Asset Intelligence
The property keeps its risk history
Findings, closures and inspection outcomes attach to the building, so a broker question about the last three years is answered from the record rather than from a folder.
Hallucination-free by design. Atom AI answers from the records in your tenant rather than generating plausible text, so an empty field reads as empty rather than filled in for you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a facility inspection form?
A facility inspection form is the loss-control inspection of a property: a structured look at what could cause a claim rather than at what needs maintenance. This one carries thirty-four items across fire protection, escape of water and weather and security, and public and employee liability.
It ends in recommendations rather than observations. Each finding names the exposure it relates to, carries a priority of Critical, Required or Advisory, and has an action, an owner and a date.
What is the difference between a facility inspection form and a facility inspection checklist?
The phrase facility inspection checklist is used for both loss-control inspections and routine safety walks, which is why people often arrive at one expecting the other. This form is the loss-control version, written for an insurer, broker or risk manager.
A safety walk asks what could hurt somebody today and usually grades findings by severity against likelihood. If that is what you need, the safety inspection checklist is the better fit. Most occupied buildings run both on different cycles.
Who carries out a facility inspection?
Usually an insurer's risk engineer, a broker's risk manager, or a facilities or estates manager preparing for renewal. It does not require a formal qualification, but it does require someone who understands what an underwriter is looking for.
Doing it yourself before the insurer does is the most useful version. It converts findings into work you have already closed rather than into conditions attached to a renewal.
What do Critical, Required and Advisory mean?
Critical is an immediate exposure that needs acting on now rather than scheduling, like a wedged fire door or uncontrolled hot work. Required is a genuine deficiency that should be corrected but does not need same-day action. Advisory is worth recording and is not required.
They have to be spelled exactly that way because the summary counts them, and the Critical count is what drives the risk position and the renewal recommendation at the end of the form.
Why do carried-over recommendations matter more than new ones?
Because new findings describe a building and repeated findings describe how a site responds to being told about them. Every occupied property generates findings at every visit; that is expected.
A recommendation still open at the next inspection is read as a management issue rather than a building one, and it is the single most likely thing to attach conditions to a renewal or move the terms.
How often should a facility inspection be done?
Annually for most commercial property, and before renewal whichever way the calendar falls. Higher-hazard occupancies, buildings under construction work, or sites with an open Critical are often re-inspected sooner.
The form asks for a re-inspection date on every visit for that reason. A Critical finding usually sets that date rather than the annual cycle.
Does this cover health and safety compliance?
Partly, and not in the way a safety program does. The liability section checks that statutory inspections are current, risk assessments exist, accident reporting is in place and asbestos and water hygiene controls are held where applicable.
It checks that those things exist rather than auditing them. A loss-control inspection is not a substitute for a fire risk assessment, a safety audit, or the specialist inspections it asks about.
Why record what is next door?
Because a meaningful share of fire exposure arrives from an adjoining property rather than from anything inside yours. A well-managed building attached to an unmanaged one carries that neighbor's risk.
It is one of the most commonly skipped fields on any inspection form and one of the few that an underwriter cannot get from anywhere else.
In one paragraph
A facility inspection form is a loss-control inspection rather than a maintenance walk, and every line asks what could cause a claim. Work fire protection first because that is what gets read first, then escape of water and security, then the liability items. Write an observation against anything that is not a plain yes, code each recommendation Critical, Required or Advisory, and count what is still open from the previous visit, because that number is what the risk position turns on.
The form is the floor, not the ceiling
Run it annually and before renewal, close the Criticals fast and keep the carry-over count at zero. Once findings are going quiet between visits, or you are opening a file per property to find an open Critical, the form has done its job.
