Technical Report Writing
A technical report is a formal report designed to convey technical information in a clear
and easily accessible format. It is divided into sections which allow different readers to
access different levels of information.
Today technical writing encompasses all documentation of complex technical processes. It includes
reports, executive summary statements, briefs. Any time technical information is conveyed in writing
at work, it is, by definition, technical writing.
A technical writing should contain following sections.
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Title
Abstract
Introduction
Theory
Procedure
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Further Work
References
Appendices
Toyota
The shipwreck: From 2000 to 2010, dozens of people driving Toyota-model cars died
in accidents as a result of “unintended acceleration”; their cars continued to speed up
even as they took their feet off the accelerator pedal and hit the brakes. Initially, Toyota
blamed “driver error” as the cause of the problems. As the accidents piled up and were
reported on social media, the company then began to blame the cars’ floor mats, in
which gas pedals were supposedly getting stuck. Finally, after years of public
investigation, the company was forced to acknowledge that an engineering flaw was
causing its cars’ gas pedals to stick—a problem it had known about for a long time but
had refused to own up to.
In the end, Toyota was forced to recall tens of millions of cars, settle a number of
lawsuits, and pay a $1.2 billion federal fine for lying to regulators, Congress, and the
public. It is still trying to repair its reputation.
The lesson: Honest communication has always been a moral imperative. In the age of
the Internet, when information is nearly impossible to suppress, honest, transparent
corporate communication with the public must be honest, transparent, clear, accurate,
and thorough. In today’s marketplace, businesses must expect to be held
accountable—and to clearly acknowledge their accountability in both word and deed.
Hyatt Regency walkway collapse (1981)
On July 1, 1980, the newly constructed Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri,
opened to the public. The hotel featured several suspended walkways crossing its
multistory atrium. Preliminary plans called for the fourth-floor walkway to hang from the
ceiling, connected by steel rods. In that design, the rods would barely hold the weight of
the walkway itself, and would not have passed local building codes. Those supports
were included in the final construction, and to make matters worse, the second-floor
walkway was suspended from the fourth-floor walkway directly above it, doubling the
load on those parts.
On July 17, 1981, the hotel was crowded for a dance. The linked walkways crashed to
the dancefloor, killing 114 people and injuring another 200 revelers. The structural
engineer in charge of the walkways blamed the design flaw on a breakdown in
communication, but the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse has become a popular case
study in the ethics of engineering.