Your first FRA in 30 minutes

A walk-through of FRA Flow from a fresh workspace to a signed-off report on a block of flats.

This guide takes you from a fresh FRA Flow workspace to a signed-off report on a block of flats in roughly thirty minutes. We use a worked example throughout (Bramley House, eight storeys, thirty-two flats) so the steps make sense as you follow along.

Before you start

• An invite to your FRA Flow workspace. Check your inbox for a sign-in link.
• An iPad (or a desktop browser; the iPad is the recommended on-site device, but everything works in Chrome or Safari on a laptop too).
• The previous FRA for the property as a PDF, if one exists. FRA Flow surfaces it in the Context panel during the visit.

Step 1. Set up the records the assessment needs

A property in FRA Flow always belongs to a landlord and a dutyholder. Build the records in that order so the property form has both options to pick from.

A fresh workspace shows a Get started card on the dashboard that walks the four setup steps in sequence: add a landlord, add a dutyholder, add a property, schedule your first assessment. Tap the CTA on each row, or use the sidebar manually:

1. Open the sidebar, go to Landlords, click New landlord. Enter the company name, address, and contact email.
2. Go to Dutyholders, click New dutyholder, enter the responsible-person details. The dutyholder is often the same organisation as the landlord. That is fine; create both records anyway.
3. Go to Properties, click New property. Pick the landlord and the dutyholder you just created, fill in the address, and set the building type, storey count, and unit count. These three fields drive the BS 9792 section template.

The Get started card removes itself once you have one record of each kind plus a scheduled assessment.

Step 2. Schedule the assessment

Open Assessments, click Schedule assessment, and pick the property. Set yourself as the assessor and pick a target date. FRA Flow seeds the BS 9792:2025 section template into the assessment automatically. You will see the BS 9792 sections in the workbench, ready to be walked.

Step 3. Prep the visit on the iPad

The night before the visit (or just before you leave the office), open My visits on the iPad and expand the row for the assessment. The expanded panel shows the prep pack: address, responsible person, known limitations, the previous FRA if one exists, and a Download for offline button. Tap that to cache the property snapshot, the section template, and any documents onto the iPad so the workbench works without a network.

Once the cache is fresh and the prep pack reads as ready, tap Mark as ready on the same row. The visit row then shows a green "Ready" chip so you can see at a glance which visits are prepped without expanding each one.

Step 4. Walk the building

On site, open the assessment. The workbench has three columns:

• Left: locations and the BS 9792 section list. Tap a quick-add chip (Outside approach, Lobby, Stair A, Roof, etc) to register the location you are standing in. The location appears in the list and the URL updates so you can pick up where you left off.
• Middle: observations for the selected location. Tap the + Observation button to start a capture.
• Right: context. Property snapshot, the previous FRA, and a Coverage tab showing which sections still need a conclusion.

Each observation is a three-tap flow:

1. Capture. Photo, voice, or type. Photo opens the iPad's rear camera; the file is compressed before it leaves the device so it does not blow your data plan. Voice records straight from the browser.
2. Risk. Low, Medium, or High. One tap, auto-advances.
3. Save. Add a description, a recommended action, and pick the BS 9792 section. Hit save. The observation appears as a card in the middle column.

When you reconnect, FRA Flow drains the queue. Photos upload, voice notes are transcribed, and category suggestions land back on the observation cards in seconds.

Step 5. Wrap each section

As you walk a section, tap the section row in the left rail to mark its conclusion: Satisfactory, Action required, or Not applicable. Not applicable requires a justification (sprinkler system absent and out of scope, no plant room on site, etc).

The Coverage tab on the right rail shows progress as you go. By the end of the visit every section should have a coloured dot.

Step 6. Generate the draft

Back at the desk, open the assessment workbench and tap Generate draft in the top bar. FRA Flow writes the report's narrative paragraphs in parallel: executive summary, limitations, the observation paragraph and reviewer comment for each section, and the action plan introduction. The draft streams in as each paragraph completes.

Step 7. Review and sign off

The assessor clicks Submit for review on the report viewer. The draft moves to the reviewer queue, visible to anyone in the workspace with the reviewer or admin role.

A reviewer opens the draft from the queue. Each paragraph has:

• A Show source panel listing every observation the paragraph was generated from, with photos, voice notes, location, risk, and named assessor.
• A mode indicator showing whether the paragraph is the AI draft, an edited AI draft, or human-authored. The reviewer can swap in a hand-written paragraph at any time, and the source-linking still works because the underlying observation list stays attached to the paragraph.
• A regenerate button if the AI draft missed the mark.

The reviewer takes one of two actions: Approve draft flips status to signed and notifies the assessor via a bell update, or Reject with note sends the draft back to drafting with a short note for the assessor to address. The assessor sees the rejection note as a rose banner on the report viewer and can re-submit once the changes land. See the sign-off page for the full two-action flow and the audit-trail behaviour.

Pre-pilot, sign-off is a single click. The heavier sign-off pass (named-reviewer signature, hallucination-guard hard gate, PDF and Word export, audit lock) ships in M3.

Where to go next

• How AI drafts work covers the audit-trail guarantees you can rely on with reviewers and landlords.
• BS 9792:2025 alignment explains how the section template maps to the standard.
• Source linking walks through the Show source panel and the divergence flags reviewers see.