Building a procedure library and closing audit findings

Every few years the federal agency that funds transit reviews agencies like ours top to bottom. Ours produced findings, each with a corrective action and a deadline.

Findings are mostly about paper. Is the procedure written down, is it current, and can you show that you follow it? Some of ours needed updating.

What I used AI for

• Corrective action documents across five finding areas.
• A written procedure library, built one document at a time with a consistent numbering scheme and the same layout throughout. The complaint procedure and the operator training manual are finished.
• A retraining plan on serving riders with disabilities, with a workbook to track who has completed what.
• A paratransit eligibility packet: the application, a rider's guide and a fillable acceptance letter.
• A revised asset management plan and the access request forms for a federal system.

How the work actually goes

The pattern is the same each time. I upload the old document, the finding and the regulation. Claude drafts. I correct what it got wrong about how we really operate. It redrafts.

What surprised me is how often it stops to ask. For our administrative procedures it gave me a twelve-part information request before it would write a word, because it did not have the facts. Another procedure sat unfinished until I could supply details that only I had. An assistant that will not invent your procedures for you is the kind you want near an audit.

Where it falls short

It can write a procedure that reads well and does not match what your staff do on a Tuesday morning. A written procedure you do not follow is worse than none. I read every draft against real practice.

It also needs real data. Our safety plan update could not be finished until we had actual incident numbers. It did not guess at them.

Try it

Start with one finding. Give the AI the finding, the rule and your current document, and ask what is missing.

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Part of the series 27 ways I actually use AI. Claude drafted this post from the record of our work together.