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The inspector asked for records I do not have. What now?

Published · Compliance Binder

Start with this: the records almost certainly exist. Service companies keep copies of their own work, because their liability depends on it as much as yours does. What you are missing is not the documents, it is a copy of them.

Do this in order

  1. Ask the inspector what window they need. Two years and six months are very different amounts of work. Ask before you start, and ask whether they will accept copies sent by the vendor directly, which most will.
  2. Call every vendor, today. Hood cleaning, suppression system, extinguishers, sprinkler, grease interceptor, backflow, fire alarm. Ask for every certificate they hold for your address. Say it is for an inspection, because that moves it up their queue.
  3. Check the accounts payable trail for the ones you forgot. You may not remember who pumped the grease trap in 2024. Your bank statements do. An invoice tells you who to call.
  4. Ask the previous operator or the landlord. If you took the site over, the history from before your tenancy may sit with them. In a leased building the landlord's maintenance contractor often holds records for systems you assumed were yours.
  5. Write down what you genuinely cannot recover. A gap you can explain is a much better position than a gap you appear to be hiding. Inspectors deal with businesses that changed hands constantly, and a straight answer about a period you have no records for lands far better than a vague one.

What not to do

Do not recreate a document. Do not ask a vendor to backdate a certificate to cover a period they did not service. A missing record is a paperwork problem with a paperwork remedy. A fabricated one is fraud, and it becomes the central fact of any insurance claim or proceeding that follows.

Fixing it so it does not happen twice

The reconstruction above takes most operators the better part of a week. The reason it is a week rather than an afternoon is that the records were never in one place, and that is a fixable condition rather than a fact of the trade.

This page describes what published standards say. It is not legal advice and it is not a determination about any premises. The requirements that apply to your building, including how often work must be done and what must be kept, are set by your authority having jurisdiction, which is usually your local fire marshal or health department. Where this page and your inspector disagree, your inspector is right.

Keeping this straight without thinking about it

When your vendors send the copies you have just asked them for, forward them to your location's Binder address once. From then on each report files itself as it arrives, and the next time somebody asks for two years of history you send a link that expires on a date you choose.

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