Three Rows You Could Not Reach, and What the Report Says

Correct answer: A) “No defects found in the areas inspected”, with the three rows that could not be reached recorded by location, along with the reason

“No defects found” and “not inspected” are different statements about the world, and a report that cannot tell them apart is worse than one that says less. The person reading it next quarter, or next year, or during a claim, has no way of knowing that three rows were never looked at. They will read a clean report and conclude the array was clean.

The wording that fixes it is not defensive and it is not long. Say what was inspected, say what was not, say where and say why. “No defects found in the areas inspected; rows 14 to 16 not accessible, trailer parked across the access route” takes one line and turns an ambiguous record into an accurate one. It also does something for you: it converts a frustration into a documented finding, so that the access problem is now visible to the person who can solve it.

Nothing here is about blame. The trailer is not the array's fault and nobody is suggesting it is. The report is not a statement about whose fault anything was, it is a record of what is known and how it came to be known, and the gap in the knowledge is part of that record.

The O&M point: a visual inspection produces no data. There is no instrument reading, no log file and no monitoring entry, so the written record is the entire output, and it is the only evidence that the visit happened at all. That makes the wording part of the work rather than paperwork afterwards. It is also the one deliverable that still exists in five years, long after everyone who was there has moved on.

Why the other options are wrong

B) “No defects found” — which is true of everything that was actually looked at

Defensible as a sentence and misleading as a record, which is the combination worth watching for. It is true of what was looked at, and it does not say that is what it means, so the qualification lives in the technician's head and not on the page. Every reader afterwards gets the unqualified version.

C) Mention it to the site contact on the way out and record “no defects found”, since the obstruction was temporary and not the array’s fault

The verbal note is a good instinct aimed at the right person and it does not survive. The site contact changes job, the conversation is not minuted, and the written record is the thing that persists and the thing an insurer or a new O&M provider will read. Tell them, by all means, and then write it down, because only one of those two is still true in three years.

D) Record the whole inspection as incomplete and log no findings at all until the site can be fully accessed

This throws away real work. Most of the array was inspected and found sound, and that is a genuine result worth recording, with a date attached. Withholding it until the site can be fully accessed means the next visit starts from nothing, and it makes the report an all-or-nothing instrument when the situation it is describing is partial.

References

• NABCEP OMAT JTA v.2026.5 — Domain 4, Task 5.C: "Visual inspection"
• NABCEP OMAT JTA v.2026.5 — Domain 4, Task 5.B: "Record keeping (e.g., system logging, data sheets, user manuals, as-built plan set, maintenance records)". The JTA lists inspection and the record of it as separate knowledge items, which is the distinction this question rests on. No standard is cited.