Corrective Actions: What to Write and What Not To

A contractor writes on the report that the delivery door seal is damaged. Six months later the same recommendation appears on five more reports, the seal is still damaged, and an auditor has just read all six.

That is the most common significant finding in pest files in Vietnam, and it is entirely avoidable. The issue is not that the seal was not fixed; it is that nobody wrote down what happened to the recommendation.

What a corrective action record contains

Four things: what was recommended, what was decided, who is responsible, and when it was done — or a target date. That is the whole structure, and it fits on one line of a spreadsheet.

The decision does not have to be to act. A documented decision not to act, with a reason and an alternative control, closes the loop just as effectively. What cannot be defended is silence.

The three legitimate responses

Done, with a date and evidence. Scheduled, with a target date and an owner. Or declined, with a reason and a stated alternative control — for example, that the wall penetration cannot be sealed until the refurbishment in March, and until then a monitor is placed at that point and checked weekly.

All three are acceptable to an auditor. Only the third requires any judgement, and it is the one that most sites avoid writing down, which is why it becomes an open item instead.

What not to write

Do not write "noted" or "will be actioned" with no date and no owner, because that is a record of having read something rather than of having decided. Do not write a target date you know will not be met, because a missed documented date is worse than an honest longer one.

And do not write anything that assigns blame to an individual. Corrective action records are read by auditors, by customers and sometimes in disputes, and a record that says a named person failed to act creates a document that helps nobody and discourages the next report.

Root cause is the part that gets skipped

Cleaning up droppings is a correction. Working out why an animal was in that area is a corrective action. Auditors distinguish sharply between the two, and a file full of corrections with no causes is a file that shows a site responding rather than improving.

The useful discipline is a single sentence: why was it possible for this to happen. Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable — the cleaning specification does not cover behind the equipment, the door is propped open every afternoon — and that discomfort is exactly where the value is.

Who owns the item matters

A recommendation assigned to nobody is a recommendation that will still be open next year. Each item needs a named role, and where the item belongs to a landlord or a building operator rather than to you, the record should say so and should show what you did to raise it.

That last point protects you. An auditor finding an unresolved landlord item with three dated emails attached is looking at a site doing what it can, not at a site ignoring a problem.

Evidence closes it properly

A photograph of the repaired seal, an invoice for the work, an email confirming a schedule change. Attaching evidence turns a claim into a closure and takes seconds at the time. Trying to reconstruct it eleven months later takes an afternoon and often fails.

Reviewing the open list

Once a quarter, read the list of open items. Anything open for more than two quarters either needs escalating or needs converting into a documented decision not to act with an alternative control. A short open list with recent dates reads as a live system; a long one with old dates reads as a filing cabinet.

Related reading

See building a file from nothing and trend data. For the audit itself, preparing at three days notice and HACCP pest control records. Reports are explained in understanding a service report. Our parent company follows the same reporting structure on its business programme.

Global Pest Control is the English-language arm of Khử Trùng Toàn Cầu, based in Thu Duc City.

Common questions

The recommendation is the landlord\x27s and they will not act. What do we write?

Write exactly that, with dates. Record the recommendation, record each time it was raised with the landlord, attach the correspondence, and record the alternative control you have put in place in the meantime. That is a complete and defensible corrective action record, and it is a considerably stronger position than leaving the item blank.

Can we close an item without doing anything?

Yes, if you document the decision and the reason and put an alternative control in place. What you cannot do is close it silently. An auditor comparing an open recommendation on six reports with a closed line in the action log and no explanation will ask, and the answer needs to already exist.

How quickly do items need closing?

There is no universal rule, and the expectation scales with risk. A structural gap admitting rodents into a food production area is a days matter; a recommendation to improve stock rotation in a dry store is a weeks matter. Setting a target date yourself, and meeting it, matters more than the length of the period.