Blank Risk Assesement

Writing an Executive Summary.

This document is designed to guide you through the process of writing an executive summary, particularly with how it differs from a traditional discussion.

An executive summary condenses the main message of the report, so that a time poor individual can understand the findings in 1-2 paragraphs. Picture preparing something for your supervisor’s supervisor. It is an exercise in cutting superfluous information. An executive summary should include

• the purpose of the report
• the methods used to conduct the investigation
• the results of the investigation
• the conclusions drawn from the investigation

Below is an example that highlights some of the common mistakes that people make when writing executive summaries with advice on how and how to fix or avoid them.

Background.

Students in CHM1051 were given the following introduction:

Recently, farmers in Western Australia have reported unusual colours in some of the lakes located near the local mining areas. A federal task force has been appointed to investigate this environmental issue. Given the time constraints placed on the task force, they have asked that Monash Consulting assist them in analysing the samples they collected.

The students were also supplied with the following guidance:

The Cary 60 UV-Vis spectrophotometers will be used for two purposes:

• Comparing the absorbance spectra of known transition metal samples to an authentic sample provided by the task force, so as to qualitatively determine the contaminants.
• Constructing a calibration curve using standards of known concentrations and plotting graphs of concentration vs. absorbance to quantitatively determine the concentrations of contaminants in the water samples

The findings should be reported in a professional and succinct manner in an executive summary. This document will guide you through writing what is termed an ‘Executive Summary’.

An example of a poor executive summary.

In solution, many metals can be toxic to many animals, including humans. If found in significant quantities, these metals can cause significant health issues ranging from hindered organ activity to the death of the affected organism. In Western Australia, some lakes in the vicinity of local mining operations have been showing signs of discolouration - possibly due to metal contaminants from the local mines. Monash Consulting has been recruited to investigate the potential of this contamination.

To achieve this, Monash Consulting took solutions of likely contaminants (0.2 M nickel (II), 0.1 M chromium (III), 0.2 M cobalt (II) and 0.1 M copper (II)) and analysed their absorbance of light from 300-900 nm. The maxima of these solutions were then compared to the supplied unknown solutions to qualitatively determine their composition (e.g. if the measured maxima for copper and cobalt were present in an unknown solution, it was considered likely this solution was contaminated with these metals).

From here, calibration curves were generated for the four metals in solution. For solutions identified as containing certain metals, their absorbance at a given wavelength (the maxima noted earlier for each metal solution) was obtained and their concentration determined through comparison to the calibration curve.

This lead to the discovery of nickel and cobalt contamination in ‘Sample 1’ and cobalt and copper contamination in ‘Sample 2’. ‘Sample 1’ was found to have concentrations of 0.12 M of both nickel and cobalt and ‘Sample 2’ was found to have concentrations of 0.11 M and 0.05 M of cobalt and copper respectfully. The drinking water guidelines for the concentration of copper and nickel are 2 mg/L and 0.02 mg/L respectively (cobalt not found).