Consultancy reports are written for a non-specialist audience. Often they are written in response to a request for information from an organisation or business. It is your responsibility to make sure the reader can understand the information you present.
Before you start writing any report, you need to think carefully about who you are writing for, your audience, and why you are writing, your purpose
These are important because they affect the language you use, the information you include and how you organise it, and the visuals you choose to support the text.
In the table below, the audience and purpose of a consultancy report and lab report are compared.
| Consultancy Report (non-specialist audience) | Lab report (specialist audience) |
| Purpose: to share research with an outside business, often in response to a specific need or problem. Therefore:
|
Purpose: to share experimental work and findings with the research community. Therefore:
|
Note: there is, of course, variation within the terms ‘specialist’ and ‘non-specialist’. If you explained a module you’re studying to other students in the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, you would probably find you share some specialist vocabulary and knowledge. However, you would also probably know some specialist vocabulary and concepts that they do not. You would therefore need to pitch your discussion so that you were not ‘talking down’ to them, but also not hindering communication by using unfamiliar jargon.
The appropriate presentation of figures and tables is also important in writing a successful consultancy report.
Dr Kate Parks explains how to do this: here
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