How we verify

Construction briefs

Model-specific notes on how a boat is built and what tends to fail on it — where the balsa core sits, which hull-to-deck joint gives trouble, what a twenty-year-old example of this model usually needs.

A brief counts as reviewed only when a named person has read it line by line, one brief at a time. It is never set in bulk, never by a script, and never by the content itself. Until someone has done that, the brief says so on its face.

Vessel specifications

Two kinds sit side by side. Some entries are researched, with the source recorded against them. The rest are parametric estimates — calculated from comparable boats rather than read off a builder's specification.

That is fine for finding a vessel and starting a report. It is not fine as a fact in one. The sheet itself says which you are looking at.

If a figure matters to your conclusion, take it from the boat.

Inspection checklists

Authored in-house against the survey codes of practice, and reviewed as a body of work rather than certified item by item. They set out what to check and how to check it, including where a component has to be examined out of the water or under way.

They tell you what to look at. What you find, and what it means, is yours.

Standards references

Checklist items cite the standard that governs them — ISO, ABYC, IIMS and others — filtered to the jurisdiction of the survey, so a US-only reference does not appear on a UK survey.

Around half of the ISO references have been checked by hand against the published standard on iso.org, confirming the number, the title and the edition actually say what we cite them for. That work is ongoing. Until a reference has been through it, we treat it as unconfirmed.

We have found and removed fabricated references in our own content before, which is why the checking exists. Where no standard genuinely governs a component we leave the reference blank — a gap is an honest answer, and inventing a plausible-sounding citation is not.

What we check as a matter of course

Beyond the reading above, some things are enforced rather than trusted:

• Jurisdiction. Standards are filtered to the survey's country, so you are not shown a reference that does not apply where the boat is.
• Provenance on the face of it. Construction briefs and vessel specifications say what they are where you read them, not in a footnote on a legal page. AI-drafted content is labelled as such.
• Editions. When a report is assembled, the year on every standard it cites is checked against our register, so a superseded edition cannot quietly appear in your text.
• Corrections are recorded, not just received. A reported error becomes a tracked item, not an email someone meant to action.

If we have got something wrong

Every construction brief in the app has a “tell us” link. It takes one tap, it records what you were looking at, and it comes to us with your reply address on it.

If you spot something wrong — on a brief, a checklist, a specification or a citation — tell us and we will record it and fix it.

What this means for your report

Nothing yachtscanr produces is a finding until you make it one. The software decides what you are prompted to look at. It does not decide what is wrong with the boat, and it does not sign anything.

Your report carries your name and your professional indemnity. We build the tool around that, not over it.