He's not (necessarily) being petty.
Stating that a value has been surveyed, measured, reported, or analysed as x, y, or z gives a whole lot of additional meaning, without the use of a lot of extra words… it gives the reader confidence – it helps to convince a perhaps sceptical audience of the strength of your argument.
Reviewing technical reports is the bane of my life. It seems to take grads about 5-10yrs before they learn to compose a good technical report.
A technical report needs to be concise and precise. The least possible words should be used to convey the greatest possible meaning and with clarity.
There should be no room for "reading between the lines" – that's the space were the lawyers make their money, because the meaning that you want to convey may not be the meaning that a reader takes from your writing – and that reader may not be your client it may be (and often is)a third party who might not appreciate, or care, about the brief that you were given…
I am forever trying to convince other people that the quality of writing is as important as the quality of the science or engineering content in a report. The report is the shop window, it may be all that the client gets for a very substantial fee. If the spelling, grammar and construction is poor, the report will give the impression that the content is also poor – even if it is not…. and that's before we get to unintentional changes of meaning resulting from poor English….