How equipment inspections, Defects and Work Orders fit together

Three different records, on purpose

Filing an equipment inspection, flagging something on it, and fixing that thing are three separate steps, each with its own record. Keeping them separate is what lets an inspection stay an honest, unedited history even after the problem it found has been repaired.

1. Equipment Inspection (EQI-xxxx) — what a worker actually filed: every check, its outcome, any note or photo. Never edited afterward, by anyone, for any reason.
2. Defect (DEF-xxxx) — one flagged check, waiting to be dealt with. Raised the moment the inspection is submitted.
3. Work Order (WO-xxxx) — the repair job a mechanic opens once they've decided what needs doing.

What raises a Defect

Any check answered Issue or Warning on a filed equipment inspection — every one, automatically. There's no setting on a check that turns this off; a Fail is a Fail whether or not anyone happens to be watching for it.

A Pass or N/A never raises anything. Who gets notified about a flagged check is a separate, older setting — the check's own notify position/person, and the checklist's Critical Issue Recipients — and that fires the moment the inspection is submitted, regardless of what happens to the Defect afterward.

The Defects queue

Work Orders → Defects lists every open Defect not yet on a work order. It's sorted the same way every time, not something you configure:

• Issues always sort above Warnings.
• Within each, the longest-open sits at the top — so the thing that's been waiting the longest is the first thing you see.

A Defect that sits too long gets loud rather than staying quiet in a list nobody rechecks:

Turning a Defect into repair work

From the Defects queue, select one or more and either:

• Attach to an existing work order — folds the selection onto a job already open.
• Create work order from selected — opens a new one, pre-filled from the selection. A work order still needs one asset on its record even if the selected Defects span more than one machine; it's set from the first Defect you picked.

Nothing forces a Defect into a work order by itself. A mechanic decides — today, next week, or folded into a job that's already open for something else on the same truck.

Issues you notice yourself, with no inspection behind them

Not everything a mechanic finds came from someone else's inspection. The New Work Order form has its own "Additional issues found" box — one line per issue — for exactly that. Each line becomes its own item on that work order immediately; there's nothing to pick up afterward, because it was never sitting unattached in the first place.

Repairs done by an outside shop

A work order isn't only for a mechanic on staff. When creating one — or reassigning an existing one — Assignment offers Internal or External. Internal is the picker you already know: choose a person from your own crew. External is for a repair shop that isn't a Fieldtec user at all, and doesn't work the same way.

• Instead of a person, External asks for a vendor — typed once, then remembered so it autocompletes next time you send something to the same shop.
• The work order's status becomes Sent to Shop rather than In Progress: the asset is physically gone, so there's nothing for anyone to log live.
• Nobody on the outside logs anything themselves. Once the asset is back, an admin fills in Log shop return — what was done, the cost off the invoice, and a copy of the invoice itself — reading straight off the paperwork the shop handed over.

Logging the return moves the work order to Completed, same as an internal repair — sign-off still has to happen before it closes. If anything, that check matters more here: the person who touched the asset doesn't answer to this company's safety program, so confirming the repair actually worked is on you, not them.

When a Warning fixes itself

If the same check comes back Pass on a later inspection, any open Warning Defect for it clears automatically — no work order needed. An Issue never does this: a Fail only resolves through a work order actually closing, on the reasoning that a real problem shouldn't quietly disappear just because nobody re-checked it that carefully.

Closing the loop

Signing off a work order resolves every Defect attached to it. The original inspection is never touched — instead, its own detail page grows a small green tag beside the check that started it all:

So a filed inspection stays exactly as filed, and still ends up telling the whole story — what was found, and eventually, what happened about it.

Taking an asset out of service

Flagging an Issue does not automatically take an asset out of service — that stays a deliberate, manual call. Open the relevant work order and use "Tag asset out of service" there; the same control brings it back when the job's done. Nothing about signing off the work order does this for you either way, on purpose — the person closing the job may not be the right person to decide the asset's back in service.