Handover & Transition

Was what was delivered tested against what was asked for, by someone who will have to use it?

Document acceptance and information transfer are different events, and only the first has a procedure attached. A pack can be complete against its register, accepted by the party who commissioned it, and still not answer the questions operations will ask in its first year. The cost of the difference lands after everyone responsible has left, which is why it is not felt as a cost by anybody with authority to prevent it.

What to examine

• Compare the delivered information against the asset information requirements, not against the document register.
• Have a competent person who was not involved attempt to answer three operating questions using only what was supplied. This test is cheap and almost nobody runs it.
• Check whether the accepting signature belongs to the receiving organisation or to the delivering one.
• Sample as-built records against physical reality in a small number of locations. Late substitutions and field modifications are the usual gap.

Required by

• ISO 19650-3, information management during the operational phase of assets.
• FIDIC Conditions of Contract, 2017 edition, Sub-Clause 10.1, which makes supply of as-built records and operation and maintenance manuals an express requirement of taking over.
• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 7.6, data and information.

Handover is where the cost lands, and the Gulf is now taking delivery→

Has anyone captured why the asset is the way it is, and what was accepted rather than resolved?

Design intent is the least recorded and most valuable category of what an owner inherits. An operator who does not know why a system was configured a particular way cannot safely change it, and will eventually either leave a defect alone or introduce one while fixing it. Every large project also ends with a private list of things accepted rather than resolved, held in people’s heads and in email. That list is reliably what operations most needs and is never a deliverable.

What to examine

• Ask, in writing and before demobilisation, what was accepted rather than resolved. People generally answer a direct question.
• Check whether design intent is recorded anywhere other than in the drawings.
• Identify which individuals hold undocumented knowledge and whether any mechanism exists to transfer it before they leave. Usually the mechanism is a leaving date.
• Test whether the organisation has determined what knowledge is necessary for the operation of its assets, which the second edition now requires explicitly.

Required by

• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 7.7, knowledge, new in the second edition and listed by ISO among the main changes from the 2014 edition.
• ISO 19650-3, information management during the operational phase of assets.

Handover is where the cost lands, and the Gulf is now taking delivery→

Were the contractual conditions for taking over actually met, and where they were not, who agreed to proceed and on what record?

Completion dates are visible, politically weighted and reported upwards. Information conditions are none of those things. When the two conflict, the information condition gives way, usually through a mechanism that is entirely legitimate and entirely undocumented in its consequence. The waiver is granted to protect a date and the cost of it appears years later in a different budget.

What to examine

• Read the taking-over certificate against the conditions in the contract. List what was outstanding at the date of issue.
• For each outstanding item, find who accepted it and what was recorded about the consequence.
• Check whether the Engineer issued the Notice of No-objection on the as-built records and the manuals, where the contract requires it.
• Establish whether any route to deemed taking over was relied on, and if so whether the information obligations were satisfied by another means.

Required by

• FIDIC Conditions of Contract, 2017 edition, Sub-Clause 10.1, taking over the works, and Sub-Clause 10.3, interference with tests on completion.
• ISO 21502:2020, Clause 6, covering project closure and transition.

Handover is where the cost lands, and the Gulf is now taking delivery→

Can the thing that was built be traced to the thing that appears on the balance sheet, in both directions?

The financial and technical records of an asset are usually created by different people, at different times, from different sources, at different levels of breakdown. Neither is wrong. They simply do not reconcile, and nobody discovers this until something has to be revalued, impaired, insured or replaced. In jurisdictions converting from cash to accrual accounting the problem stops being an inconvenience and becomes a reporting obligation with a date attached.

What to examine

• Take ten assets from the financial register and locate them physically. Then take ten physical assets and locate them in the register. The second direction usually fails first.
• Compare the componentisation used for depreciation against the breakdown used for maintenance. Where they differ, establish which one anybody actually manages the asset by.
• Check the valuation basis and whether it is supportable from the delivery record or was derived by apportionment.
• Confirm data traceability between financial and non-financial sources, which the second edition now requires.

Required by

• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 7.6, data and information, requiring alignment of financial and non-financial terminology and traceability of data.
• ISO/TS 55010, alignment of the financial and non-financial functions of the organisation in asset management.
• IPSAS 33, first-time adoption of accrual basis IPSAS.

Accrual conversion gave three years. It did not give anyone a register.→

Does an organisation exist that is capable of operating this asset on the day it is handed over, with people in post?

Readiness is generally assessed as a property of the asset. The asset is usually the part that is ready. What is missing is the organisation: the roles, the trained staff, the spares, the systems, the contracts and the authority to spend. These have long lead times and no contractor is responsible for any of them, so they are nobody’s critical path until the week they become everybody’s.

What to examine

• Check whether the operating roles are filled, not whether they are defined. A structure chart is not readiness.
• Establish the lead time on the longest operational dependency, usually a systems implementation or a term maintenance contract, and compare it to the handover date.
• Confirm training was delivered to the people who will do the work rather than to whoever was available.
• Test whether the operator can raise, approve and pay for a corrective work order on day one.

Required by

• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 7.1, resources, and Clause 7.2, competence.
• ISO 55012, people involvement and competence in asset management.
• ISO 21502:2020, Clause 6, on transition and the realisation of benefits after closure.