Washing glassware, labelling samples and copying readings into a register does not feel like the raw material of an impressive report. It is, once you understand what a marker is actually looking for.
This guide is for every student who did their industrial training in a laboratory: microbiology, biochemistry, chemistry, science laboratory technology, medical laboratory science, food science, soil science and the rest. Whatever your course, a SIWES report on a laboratory placement is organised around what you did at the bench, and that is what this post covers. For the overall structure, from title page to appendices, follow our complete SIWES report format guide; this one fills in the laboratory content.
Organise the report around the work, not the degree
Here is the mistake laboratory students make first. They write the report as a summary of their course, restating theory from class. A SIWES report on a laboratory placement should instead read like an organised account of the bench: the sections of the lab you rotated through, the analyses you ran, the instruments you used, and the records you kept. The theory only enters where it explains why a procedure is done, and one sentence of why per procedure is usually enough.
A simple structure for Chapter Three that works in almost any lab: one section per unit or bench you passed through, and within each section, the procedures you performed, in time order, pulled straight from your logbook.
Safety is content, not decoration
Every laboratory runs on safety procedures, and documenting them properly is some of the easiest credit in the whole report. Write about the personal protective equipment you used and when, how reagents and specimens were handled and stored, how sharps and biological waste were disposed of, what the lab’s rules were for spills and accidents, and any safety induction you received. This shows a marker you worked in a real lab and paid attention, and it fills honest pages without padding.
Name the equipment, and say what you did with it
Vague equipment lists waste the best material you have. For each major instrument, three things: its name, what it measures or does, and what you personally did with it. Calibrating a pH meter before each session, preparing slides for the microscope, loading the centrifuge and balancing the tubes, running samples through the spectrophotometer and recording absorbance, sterilising media in the autoclave. If you only observed a procedure, say you observed it; claiming hands-on work your logbook cannot support is how reports get questioned.
Samples and records: the quiet backbone
Two more things worth their own paragraphs. First, sample handling: how samples arrived, how they were labelled, registered, stored and tracked through the lab. Second, record keeping: the registers, worksheets and result forms the lab used, and which ones you filled. Laboratories live and die by documentation, and a student who noticed that fact stands out immediately.
How to write routine work so it does not read thin
The fear is real: you did the same tests many times, so what is there to write? The answer is depth instead of variety. Take one routine procedure and walk through it completely once, from sample collection to the recorded result, naming each step, reagent and instrument. Then state how often you performed it and what changed as you improved. “By the third week I could prepare the reagent unsupervised, and my readings were being countersigned without correction” tells a marker exactly what routine work taught you. Repetition is not thin content. Unexamined repetition is.
A sample chapter opening for a laboratory placement
“I began the attachment in the sample reception unit of the laboratory, where my duties included receiving samples, checking them against the accompanying request forms, assigning laboratory numbers and recording each sample in the register. After two weeks I moved to the analysis bench, where I worked under the supervision of the laboratory scientist on routine analyses. My first assigned procedure was…”
Swap in your own units, procedures and instruments. Keep the movement in time order and keep every claim inside what your logbook shows.
One report, many courses
Because laboratory attachments cut across so many departments, students from different courses in the same lab sometimes copy one another’s reports. Resist it. Your department marks a SIWES report on a laboratory placement against its own expectations, and a microbiology marker and a chemistry marker are not looking for the same emphasis. Share ideas with your lab mates by all means, but write your own account from your own logbook, in your own department’s format. SIWES itself is run by the Industrial Training Fund, but the report is graded by your school, and it is your school’s instruction that decides how yours must look.
Mistakes that cost laboratory students marks
- Rewriting classroom theory instead of describing the bench.
- Listing equipment without saying what you did with it.
- Leaving out safety, sample handling and record keeping entirely.
- Claiming hands-on work on procedures you only observed.
- Ignoring the department’s own format instruction, which beats every guide online, including this one.
Finish it properly
Once Chapter Three is down, build the rest of the report around it using the full SIWES report format guide. If your placement also involved IT or systems work, the computer science SIWES guide covers how to write that side up. And if you want experienced eyes on your draft before submission, talk to Delight Data Exploration; helping Nigerian students write reports that pass is what we have done for over twelve years.
You kept the lab running for months. Now put it on paper the same careful way you labelled those samples, and the marks will follow.