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Procedure Assessment

An independent, expert review to determine whether your procedures will hold up in the hands of the people who use them.
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What is a procedure assessment?

A procedure assessment is an independent, step-by-step evaluation of your procedures against the PPA AP-907-005 procedure writing standard and the 18 recognized error traps. Procedure Solutions Management’s assessments show where a procedure is likely to lead a qualified person into a mistake, why, and which fixes matter most, before you commit budget to rewrites.

It is not a spell-check or a formatting review. We read your procedures the way a human performance failure would, looking for the conditions that make a competent person more likely to get it wrong.

When should you get a procedure assessment?

Before an audit.
An inspection or evaluation is coming, and you’d rather find the gaps yourself than have someone find them for you.
During a major change.
A merger, a new system, workforce turnover, or a planned rewrite. A baseline now directs the work where it matters most.
After a finding.
A regulator, an INPO evaluation, an internal audit, or an event pointed at your procedures, and you need an expert read on how deep the problem goes.

Your procedures are written, reviewed, and approved. On paper, you’re compliant. Yet procedures written for veterans who knew the unwritten steps can fail the newer workforce that depends on every word. As experienced people retire, that gap widens quietly. An assessment is how you find it before an audit or an event finds it for you. 

How Protected Are You?

Before we rewrite a single step, we evaluate your procedures against a defined set of human performance error traps. These are the structural features of a procedure that increase the likelihood of error, regardless of how skilled or attentive your workforce might be.

The Error Traps We Find in Nearly Every Program

When we evaluate a procedure program against the full PPA standard, we assess for the 18 recognized error traps. The six below are the ones we find in nearly every program we review, which means there is a reasonable chance they are already present in yours. 

4. Vague Steps or Steps Missing Critical Detail
Steps that tell the performer what to accomplish without saying how leaves execution to individual judgment and creates inconsistency across performers and over time.
5. Multiple Actions or Objects in the Same Step
Steps that bundle more than one discrete action or object into a single instruction, increasing the likelihood that one action is missed, skipped, or performed out of sequence.
6. Atypical Action Steps
Steps written in passive voice or non-standard structure are harder to interpret and execute consistently. Action steps should be concise, active-voice commands and not descriptions of what should happen.
8. Inadequate Defense-in-Depth or Termination Criteria Not Specified
Procedures that account only for the expected outcome leave workers without guidance when results deviate, forcing improvisation under pressure and increasing the likelihood of error or unsafe conditions.
9. Actions or Acceptance Criteria Embedded in Notes, Cautions, or Warnings
Workers are conditioned to read supporting elements as context, not direction. Placing required actions or acceptance criteria inside notes, cautions, or warnings creates the conditions for them to be missed.
13. Excessive Physical Challenges
Steps that look straightforward on paper may be physically difficult or impractical in the field. This is one of the clearest examples of the "work-as-imagined" versus "work-as-done" gap and one of the most preventable.

How We Deliver Results

Step 1

Procedure Intake and Baseline Evaluation

We begin by evaluating your existing procedures step by step against the Procedure Professionals Association standard  PPA AP-907-005, the industry benchmark for human-factored procedure quality in high-risk environments. Every step is assessed for the 18 recognized error traps, and each finding is documented with the specific deficiency identified, the human performance risk it creates, and the revision required to address it. You receive a complete baseline evaluation before we change a word.

Step 2

Workforce and Task Alignment Review

We evaluate whether the level of detail in your procedures matches the experience level and performance mode of the workforce executing them. This is not a generic assessment. We look at the specific tasks your personnel perform, the experience profile of the workforce assigned to those tasks, and whether the procedure provides sufficient guidance for a performer at the current workforce level to execute each step correctly, completely, and consistently.

Step 3

Standards and Regulatory Traceability 

Where your procedures are written to implement a governing standard, satisfy a regulatory requirement, or meet your business needs, we verify that a clear and auditable connection exists between the requirement, the procedure step that implements it, and the training that ensures the performer can execute it. Where that connection is broken or unverifiable, we document the gap and build it into the revision scope.

Step 4

Field Validation and Program Review  

A document review shows what a procedure says. Field validation shows what it does. Where scope allows, we walk procedures down against the tasks they govern, confirming that critical steps are identified and protected, that the sequence reflects actual field conditions, and that what the performer is asked to do is physically and practically achievable. We then step back from the individual documents to determine whether the deficiencies we have found are isolated, or symptomatic of the program that produced them. 

What You End Up With

Clarity before commitment. 

A complete, defensible baseline of your procedure set, measured against the standard rather than against opinion. Every finding is documented with the specific deficiency, the human performance risk it introduces, and the revision required to resolve it, then ranked so your investment is directed first at the procedures carrying the greatest consequence. You will know which procedures require conversion, which gaps call for new development, and whether the root cause lies in the documents themselves or in the program that governs them.

Whatever path you choose, you choose it with evidence. That evidence is yours to bring to leadership, to a regulator, or to your own writers. 

 

Find out where your procedures actually stand.

Tell us what prompted the question and what you’re working with. We’ll follow up to scope an assessment that fits.

Procedure assessment FAQs

 Answers to the questions we hear most before an assessment begins.

Is a procedure assessment the same as a procedure audit?
Not quite. An audit usually checks whether procedures exist, are approved, and are being followed. An assessment asks whether the procedures themselves are built to support correct performance. Many clients use an assessment to get ahead of an audit, or to understand what an audit finding actually means.
What standard do you assess against?
The PPA AP-907-005 procedure writing standard, which Procedure Solutions Management’s leadership helped develop, along with your own writer’s guide or site standards where they apply. 
Do you assess the whole procedure library or a sample?
Either. Some organizations start with a representative set of high-consequence procedures. Others need a full library baseline. We scope the assessment to the question you need answered. 
Which industries do you assess procedures for?
Nuclear utilities, oil and gas and LNG operators, DOE facilities, and other high-risk operations, including chemical, manufacturing, and power generation.
What do you need from us to start a procedure assessment?
A list of the procedures in scope (or your full procedure index), your current writer’s guide or procedure standard, and any finding, audit, or event report that prompted the review. If field validation is in scope, we’ll also need a point of contact who can arrange access to the tasks and the people who perform them.
What happens after the assessment?
Depending on what we find, the next step is usually Procedure Conversion or Procedure Development, followed by Procedure Implementation to prepare your teams to use the new procedures. Some clients take the findings to their own writers. Either way, you’ll know which procedures to fix first and why. 

In Our Clients’ Words

What an assessment revealed for one organization.

David M. | Technical Support Services Manager
"Procedure Solutions Management helped us realize that our procedures are sometimes too prescriptive and that we need to find the right balance. Their approach would be a cultural shift in our organization, but I believe it is our best long-term option to strengthen our procedure use and adherence standards. I am grateful for the level of detail and explanation they give, and I am deeply humbled by their expertise. I will most definitely be requesting their services again."

Related reading

 Go deeper on the problems an assessment is built to find with these corresponding blog posts:

Read More
18 Human Error Traps
Read More
9 Signs Your Procedure Program Is at Risk
Read More
Why Do Good Procedures Still Get Ignored in the Field?