Report Preparation

2 BEFORE THE WRITING STARTS

For the purposes of this discussion, it will be assumed that a major report must be prepared for a large external project with batch and pilot plant studies. The project has a single lead metallurgist, and a group of professionals will be preparing the report.

Each Research report is comprised of front matter (the title page, covering letter, etc.) and chapters that can include text, tables, figures and appendix segments (in that order). The text is divided into sections and subsections, into which condensed tables and figures can be placed. Through long use, all parts of the text segments are referred to as sections, e.g. “the results shown in Section 3.1.2”.

(In the mechanics of MS Word, the term “section” is used to describe part of a document file with a unique set of page characteristics. This usage will not be discussed.)

2.1 QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED

The following is a list of the salient questions that should be answered by the project and/or Process Development managers before writing commences:

who is the report being prepared for;

what do these readers expect;

will the report be broadly distributed, including to those with a limited technical familiarity with the work;

in the project proposal, what were the reporting requirements and how are these to be interpreted;

how many manhours were proposed for reporting; and

what is the deadline for transmittal to the client?

The report author(s) will need clear guidance with respect to these issues.

2.2 RESULTS FROM TESTWORK

Report preparation generally brings a project phase to a clear endpoint, perhaps launching another. The lead metallurgist should ensure that the following requirements have been met:

that any pendin...

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...e sure of the technical content and interpretation, rather than figuring things out “on the fly”. The content should be focused to the heading above it, and include the following:

an introduction with links to related sections;

a setup for the data, including reference to data source(s);

a presentation of reduced results in text, table or figure format;

a focussed discussion, raising the points in order of importance; if lengthy comparisons to other results are required, consider adding appropriate subsections;

indirect results and implications; and

a “take away” conclusion and/or commercial applicability, if appropriate.

If possible, the first draft for an entire chapter should be prepared before revisions begin to ensure that all of the major and minor topics have been adequately covered. Additional points of discussion may be revealed in this process.