Handover

Handover is the transfer of the completed building to the client. It covers the physical building, and just as importantly the information and training the client needs to operate, maintain and later alter it.

It usually coincides with practical completion but is a distinct thing. Practical completion is a contractual certification. Handover is the practical business of giving the client a building they can actually run.

What gets handed over

The O and M manuals: how each system works, how it is maintained, and by whom.

As-built information: drawings and models reflecting what was actually built rather than what was drawn at tender.

Certificates and approvals: commissioning results, test certificates, electrical and gas certification, fire alarm and sprinkler sign-off, building control completion.

Warranties and guarantees, with the conditions attached to them, because many are voided by incorrect maintenance.

Training for the people who will operate the building, delivered by the specialists who installed each system.

The health and safety file required under CDM 2015, and on higher-risk buildings the golden thread required by the Building Safety Act.

Spares, keys, access codes and the mundane items that are always found last.

Why it goes wrong

Almost always for the same reason: the information is gathered at the end instead of collected as it is produced.

Commissioning certificates sit in a subcontractor’s van, then in their office, then in the inbox of someone who has moved to another job. As-built drawings were never reconciled with the changes agreed on site in month four. Warranty documents came with the products and went in a skip.

By the time anyone assembles the file, the people who held the information have demobilised, and reconstructing it costs weeks that the programme has not got. This is the single most common cause of a completion date slipping for reasons unconnected with the actual building work.

Doing it the other way round

Handover deliverables are just deliverables. They can be listed at the start, assigned to whoever owes them, given dates, and tracked like any other task.

Certificates filed against the project when they arrive, rather than promised for later, mean the file assembles itself. Where the client’s facilities team is identified early, training can be scheduled while the specialists are still on site rather than recalled afterwards.

Keeping those items on the project record alongside the snag list is what turns handover from a scramble into the last scheduled activity. That is what Sync’s delivery management and compliance management are built to support.