Thermography Data Collection Protocols for Level 1 Teams
Level 1 thermography protocols that tell your team what to capture, when and how, so the data supports certified reporting.
A data collection protocol is a formal set of instructions for collecting thermal data when no certified thermographer is on site. It tells your team or drone operator what to capture, when, how and what to record, in plain language for people who are not thermographers.
Thermography Services (UK) writes each protocol for one client, one job and one site, and issues it as a digitally signed document with its own reference. Protocols cover building envelopes, flat roofs, electrical distribution boards, solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays and buried water mains. Data collected in line with one is defensible for later analysis and certified Level 3 reporting.
Your team collects the thermal data; our protocol makes it fit for certification.
Thermal data is easy to collect, and just as easy to collect badly. A camera set up the wrong way, a survey carried out in the wrong conditions or a missing record of the weather can leave hours of imagery that no thermographer can stand behind.
A data collection protocol prevents that. It is written by our Level 3 thermographer for one client, one job and one site, and it sets out in plain language everything the person on site needs to do: the conditions to wait for and the conditions that mean stopping, the camera settings, the order of capture, the matching visual images, the readings to take at the start and end of each session and the file names to use. Printed check sheets go to site with the team. A deviation log records anything done differently at the moment it happens, because a departure that is written down can be assessed and one that is not cannot. When the work is finished, a short data return declaration confirms what was collected and that the files are unedited copies of what the equipment recorded.
The result is data with an evidence chain behind it. Every protocol is issued as a digitally signed document with its own reference, so the method behind the data can always be traced back. Data collected in line with it, with any departures declared, is defensible for analysis and certified Level 3 reporting. When the data comes to us, the declaration and the deviation log are checked before the analysis begins.
Level 1 thermography protocols that tell your team what to capture, when and how, so the data supports certified reporting.
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thermography data collection protocol, Level 1 thermography protocol, thermographic survey protocol, thermal imaging survey specification, thermography protocol writing
Page Tags
data collection protocol, thermography protocol, Level 1 thermography, thermal imaging survey, survey method statement, Level 3 thermographer
Request a Protocol Quotation
Every protocol is written for one site and one job, so each is scoped to the subject, the location, the purpose of the survey and the people and equipment that will collect the data. Tell us what needs surveying, where and why, who will carry out the capture and what they will use, and we will come back with a clear proposal and a quotation for the protocol, and for the certified report if you want both.
Why capture needs a method
Instructions Written for the Site
Most thermal data is captured by people who are not thermographers, and there is nothing wrong with that. Drone operators, facilities teams and Level 1 camera operators collect excellent data every day when they know exactly what is needed.
The difficulty is that thermography depends on things that are invisible in the finished image. The temperature difference that lets a fault show, the time since the sun left a surface, the wind across a roof, the emissivity and reflected temperature set in the camera: none of these can be read back from a thermogram afterwards. If they were wrong on the day, or simply never recorded, the analyst cannot correct for them, and a finding built on that image cannot be certified with confidence.
A protocol moves those decisions to the right person at the right time. Our Level 3 thermographer makes them before the job, for that specific site, and writes them down. The person on site follows the instructions and records what happened. Capture and analysis stay separate, and each is done by the person best placed to do it.
Each protocol is written for the space it covers. Building envelopes, flat roofs, electrical distribution boards, solar PV arrays and buried water mains each have their own physics, their own traps and their own conditions.
It is also written for its reader. The office sections explain who is involved, which standards the method aligns with, and what the data can and cannot show. The site sections are short and practical: a field checklist, recording tables, an environmental record of air temperature, humidity, wind and cloud taken at the start and end of every session, and the deviation log. Everything is in plain UK English, with no assumed knowledge of thermography.
What you do not know about a site does not stop a protocol being written. It is recorded as a declared limitation, so everyone can see where the data stands.
Related Report Writing Services
From order to returned data
How a Protocol Is Used
It starts with the job. You tell us about the site, the subject, the purpose of the survey, who will collect the data and the equipment they will use, declared by make and model. Our Level 3 thermographer checks the information, researches the site where it matters, such as the conditions window and the orientation of the surfaces, and writes the protocol.
Before capture, your organisation signs a one-page Adoption Acknowledgement confirming that the protocol has been read and that its requirements will be passed in full to the people collecting the data. Site safety, access and permissions stay with you, and the protocol makes that division of responsibility clear.
On the day, the Data Collector follows the site sections and fills in the check sheets by hand. Nothing has to be interpreted on site: the protocol says what to do, what to record and when to stop.
Afterwards the data package is assembled: the radiometric thermal files in the camera’s native format, the matching visual images, the capture log, the environmental record, the check sheets, the deviation log and the signed data return declaration. That package is what makes certified Level 3 reporting possible, whether the analysis follows straight away or months later.
Case Study
Pre-Dawn Pipeline Survey Analysis in Lanzarote
Level 3 analysis and reporting of pre-dawn aerial thermal data captured by SKYNOX Drones SL along a 517 m municipal water pipeline corridor in Tías, Lanzarote. Thermography Services (UK) developed the structured survey process, covering controlled dawn capture, multi-altitude imaging and matching visual images. Of about 125 captures, 42 thermograms were analysed. Six locations across four clusters met the full evidence criteria as Confirmed Candidates, 22 more were classed as Possible Candidates, and every candidate location was GPS-referenced in the certified report.
Standards and Certification
Thermographic inspection, analysis and reporting are carried out by a Thermography Services (UK) ITC Level III Certified Master Thermographer (Infrared Training Centre; Certification #205722059), practising in accordance with the frameworks of ISO 18436-7:2014, ASNT SNT-TC-1A and ANSI/ASNT CP-105, and BINDT CMGEN Appendix B (UK training governance). Inspection methodology is aligned with IEC 62446-3:2017 (solar PV) and BS EN ISO 6781-1:2023 (building envelopes) as applicable.
Thermography Data Collection Protocols
What a thermography data collection protocol covers
A thermography data collection protocol is the written method for a specific thermographic survey, prepared before any data is collected. It is sometimes called a thermographic survey protocol, a thermal imaging survey specification or a thermographic survey method statement, and the purpose is the same in each case: to make sure the data captured on site can later be analysed and reported on with confidence. A protocol for a thermal imaging survey names the parties involved, the purpose of the job, the standards the method aligns with, the scope and limitations, the conditions for capture and for stopping, the equipment as declared, the capture procedure step by step and the records to keep.
Thermography protocol writing is a Level 3 task, because the protocol carries the decisions an analyst would otherwise have to make on site. Each protocol is written by our Level 3 thermographer for the job in hand, built from a fixed core method and a method for the space concerned, never edited from an old protocol, and every issued protocol states which versions of that method it was built from.
A Level 1 thermography protocol for non-thermographers
A data collection protocol for non-thermographers has to work for a reader who has never been trained in thermography. That is why the site sections are kept apart from the office sections, why the check sheets are designed to be printed and filled in by hand, and why each instruction says what to do rather than explaining the physics behind it. A Level 1 thermography protocol is just as useful to trained Level 1 operators, because it fixes the method for one job and leaves a record that a Level 3 thermographer can rely on.
Protocols are used by drone operators capturing solar, roof or pipeline data, by facilities and maintenance teams with their own thermal cameras, by consultancies and surveyors who collect data for a client, and by end clients who want to specify exactly how the data must be collected before a contractor starts. They are written for sites anywhere in the UK and internationally.
A protocol stands on its own. Data collected in line with it, with any departures recorded on the deviation log and declared, is defensible as part of a further process of analysis and certified reporting by a qualified Level 2 or Level 3 thermographer. When the data comes to Thermography Services (UK), the declaration and the deviation log are checked first, and the analysis then follows our Level 3 report writing service. Every report is written and certified by our Level 3 thermographer.
The protocol sets the method and the records. The fieldwork, site safety, access, permissions and the safe system of work remain with the organisation collecting the data. Each protocol is licensed for the project and site named on it, and the data your team collects remains yours.
Capture, Analysis and Reporting
The standards behind it
Thermography standards treat capture, interpretation and reporting as distinct competences. ISO 6781-3:2015, for building thermography, sets out the qualifications of the people who carry out thermographic investigations, those who interpret the data and those who report the results. ISO 18436-7:2014, for condition monitoring, sets out a three-category classification of thermography personnel. A data collection protocol follows the same principle: the method and the interpretation belong to a Level 3 thermographer, and the capture is carried out to that method by the person on site.
Each protocol also names the standards its method aligns with for the space concerned, such as BS EN ISO 6781-1:2023 for building envelopes or IEC TS 62446-3:2017 for solar PV. Alignment means the method follows the principles of those standards; it is not a claim that anyone collecting the data holds certification under them.
Request a Protocol Quotation
Every protocol is written for one site and one job, so each is scoped to the subject, the location, the purpose of the survey and the people and equipment that will collect the data. Tell us what needs surveying, where and why, who will carry out the capture and what they will use, and we will come back with a clear proposal and a quotation for the protocol, and for the certified report if you want both.
