How Does Valify Handle Non-Standard Document Layouts

Valify reads for content rather than for a fixed template, so a document does not have to follow a particular house style to be reviewed. What it does need is to be readable as text in a sensible order.

What is handled well

• Different section orders and different section names — "Safe System of Work" instead of "Method Statement", "Hazard Register" instead of "Risk Assessment".
• Content in tables, including risk matrices spread across several columns.
• Appendices, provided they are part of the same submission.
• Company templates that combine sections, such as hazards and controls in one table.
• Multiple files submitted together as one document.

What causes trouble

• Text in images — a risk matrix pasted in as a screenshot is invisible to the review, and it is a common cause of "no residual risk found" on a document that plainly has some.
• Complex nested tables that lose their structure when the text is extracted, so a control ends up read against the wrong hazard.
• Content in headers, footers and text boxes, which can be extracted out of sequence.
• Cross-references to documents that were not submitted: "controls as per company procedure SP-14" cannot be checked if SP-14 is not there.
• Two documents merged into one file with two sets of section headings.

When a section is reported missing and it is not

Check first whether the content is in an image, in a text box, or in an attachment that was not part of the submission. Those three account for most of it. If none of them apply, the section may be present but phrased in a way that does not read as that section at all — which is worth knowing, because a human reviewer working through nine documents will have the same problem. This is one of the recurring costs of heavily reused templates, described in generic versus site-specific RAMS.

Improving how your documents read

1. Use real text rather than pasted images for tables and matrices.
2. Give sections conventional headings, even where your internal structure differs.
3. Keep tables simple — one level, with header rows.
4. Submit attachments with the main document rather than separately.
5. Export to PDF from the original file rather than scanning a printout.

If a document is consistently read badly, send it to us. Layout handling improves from real examples, and we would rather see the awkward ones. Contact us with the file and what you expected to see.