Technical Report Writing

Who Should Attend?

Every person that is responsible for submitting reports of a technical nature. This includes but not limited to engineers, managers, assistants, project managers, site foremen and secretaries.

Course Overview

Effective communication in the engineering field is of vital importance. Your managers/clients will base their decisions on what is reflected in your report. The ability to produce a clear, concise and professional report is a skill that you can develop in order to be successful.

This course is designed to provide learners with the following:

• An understanding of how to represent technical information in a report
• The importance of the correct use of tenses and grammar
• Principles of effective, clear and concise writing
• Understanding of how technical reports should be planned and structured
• Formats and styles used in business reports
• Knowledge on avoiding the pitfalls of poor punctuation
• Understanding of when and where to include tables and figures
• Knowledge of how to effectively abbreviate in a report
• How to clarify jargon used in a report
• Technical report writing principles and templates

Course Framework

• Introduction to communication
• Communication process and barriers
• What to do to write effectively?
• Basic grammar principles with tenses
• Correct use of punctuations
• Capitalisation and abbreviation conventions
• Third person writing
• 23 Principles of clear writing
• Compiling business reports
• Planning the objective of report, structure and readership
• Organise the collected/researched information
• Writing process
• Scientific writing tips
• Writing an introduction, discussion, conclusion, appendix and summaries
• Various report structures and purpose
• Compiling technical reports
• Presenting equations
• Preferred format settings
• Reference/Citation/Bibliography
• Number conventions used
• Diagram use in reports
• Complaints about technical reports
• Checking phase and common errors

Presenter: Sandra Pienaar

Delegates can claim 2 ECSA CPD Points