Time-consuming and labour-intensive reports have long been the bane of a civil engineer’s life. Engineers have to refer to multiple databases and resources, look at site photos and technical drawings, follow strict formatting guidelines, manage report revisions, and ensure everything in the report complies with industry standards and building codes.
An engineering report can range from straightforward to complex, depending on the size and ambition of the project. These reports are more than just paperwork—they’re critical for decision-making, regulatory compliance, and collaboration between stakeholders. Yet, despite their importance, creating and managing these reports tends to fall secondary to the actual engineering work, as report writing is often seen as monotonous and tedious.
This is where Citation, a report writing tool powered by AI, can help you.
The software’s ability to generate and customise templates, coupled with its context-aware search, will reduce repetitive tasks throughout the report-generating process. While Citation comes packed with many smart features, today we want to talk about two key features—customisable templates and smart document search.
Making sure the content of your reports is well-structured and professionally formatted can be a mind-numbing task. Moreover, different reports need to follow different client preferences or regulatory needs for approval.
Citation comes with pre-installed templates, and its library of templates covers a variety of engineering applications. It can also generate a custom template for your business based on previous reports by removing all the data specific to a report, leaving only the report structure, format, and company branding.
Furthermore, Citation’s templates allow you to tailor your report’s structure to incorporate new elements—whether that’s specific sections for drawings or compliance metrics—without sacrificing the flexibility to adapt as project reporting requirements change.
The AI will learn from your input and generate a new template accordingly. You can design reports to fit the current project needs while maintaining a professional format and organised report structure that spells credibility for your company.
Instead of spending hours formatting reports, you can generate a consistent format for all your reports in a fraction of the time, allowing you to focus on critical engineering work. Templates are more than just time savers; they also help minimise errors.
When using consistent, customisable templates across multiple projects, the risk of forgetting key sections or misformatting data will reduce. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every report or be stuck with one company-wide template.
One of the most frustrating aspects of writing engineering reports is searching for the right data, which can be buried across multiple documents. Whether it’s a specific map, a CAD drawing, a building safety code checklist, or a design revision buried within a PDF, hunting for a single piece of data can take up more time than necessary.
Unlike basic keyword searches, Citation is context-aware and understands engineering jargon, technical terms, and regulation lingo. It doesn’t just look for specific words; it understands the meaning behind the query, providing results that are relevant and precise. The ability to search contextually across different file types means you no longer need to hop between multiple documents to comb through vast amounts of data.
The result? You get exactly what they’re looking for in seconds, not hours.
This context-aware search comes in handy when dealing with large-scale projects involving multiple data sources and complex data sets. You can quickly retrieve specific information from previous reports and files, ensuring consistency and accuracy in your documentation.
As you take on more complex projects, the tools you use must keep up with the pace. Citation’s customisable templates and context-aware search features help cut down a lot of manual work that’s a common bottleneck in report writing.
However, while Citation’s AI features offer numerous benefits, there’s still a need for engineers to review and validate the reports generated. It is a powerful tool that standardises the report-writing process and saves time, but it’s not a substitute for human expertise, especially in builds that are data-intensive.
We’d love to take you through what Citation can do and show you how it can completely transform the way you manage and produce reports. Do contact us for a demo.
