Daily Progress Report (DPR) — NDT Inspection

Capture each day of an NDT inspection campaign on a single editable Excel sheet — crew, inspection counts by method, holds, HSE incidents, look-ahead, and sign-off.

A Daily Progress Report (DPR) is the contractual record of what an inspection crew accomplished on a given shift. For NDT campaigns at refineries, offshore platforms, or fabrication yards, the DPR is the single most important document a Project Manager produces — it drives invoicing, schedule recovery, hold-point clearance, and client trust.

Use this template every shift. It collapses manpower, deliverables per method, holds, safety, and the next-day plan into one Excel page that clients accept. Replace the sample roles, methods, and severity codes with whatever your contract specifies.

Atlantis NDT can integrate this template into our cloud reporting platform so DPRs auto-populate from technician timesheets and the inspection report database.

Auto-populated DPRs from technician timesheets, instant client delivery, and dashboards — ask for a demo.

What this page covers

  • Overview
  • Sections Included
  • Related Free Templates
  • Need a custom DPR system?

Key points covered

  • Project / shift header — crew lead, weather, ambient temperature, DPR number
  • Manpower deployed — planned vs actual hours by role (Level III, Level II UT / RT / MT / PAUT, QC, Safety)
  • Inspections completed today — by method (UT, PAUT, TOFD, RT gamma / X-ray / DR, MT, PT, VT, ET, PMI, hardness)
  • Holds, rejects, and blockers — defect type, action required, owner, ETA
  • HSE summary — LTI / MTC / FAC / NM incidents, investigation status, CAPA
  • Sign-off — crew lead, project engineer, client representative, HSE officer

Related: Atlantis NDT ERP · Digital Twin platform · NDT inspection software · NDT reporting software · ASNT Level III consulting · NDT training. Book a free consultation.

Making the DPR worth writing

A daily progress report has two readers with different needs: the client's project team, who need scope status against plan, and your own operations, who need the utilisation and obstruction record that explains the invoice and defends the claim. Structure for both: work completed by scope line with quantities, personnel and hours by classification, equipment deployed, and — the part that matters in disputes — delays and obstructions with times, causes and who was informed. A DPR that records "waiting on permit, 0700–1130, client informed at 0715" is claim evidence; "morning lost to permits" is an anecdote.

Write findings-of-the-day as facts with references to formal reports, never as verdicts — the DPR is not the examination record, and premature conclusions in daily notes have a way of surfacing in litigation.

Where this document sits in the wider system

Templates fail as loose files and work as parts of a system: this document should cross-reference the records that feed it and the decisions it feeds, carry a revision history like any controlled document, and live where the whole team retrieves the CURRENT version — not the copy someone improved privately last year. Companies running their inspection operations on a single system of record generate most of these documents from live data rather than filling them by hand; that is the practical difference between managed records and managed paperwork. Browse all templates and resources, or ask how the generated version works.