Facility Operating Handover Preparation Checklist

Walk through what the incoming person will need on the first occasion they are at the facility alone, and check each of those things is already in their hands.

This single exercise surfaces more gaps than any list, because it forces the handover into a specific situation.

Note every key, fob and entry combination, who holds each one and which ones you cannot account for at all.

Keys distributed informally over a long period are almost impossible to reconstruct, and the change of operator is the last practical moment to try.

Note anything reachable only through an account belonging to an individual rather than to the facility, and treat that as urgent.

Access held personally leaves with the person, usually without either side realising until something is needed.

Have the incoming person open every store, cupboard and cabinet themselves, rather than being told which key does what.

Keys that turn out not to fit are discovered at a much better moment while somebody who knows is still there.

Record which access is granted by somebody else, such as a landowner, a school or a neighbouring site, and how it is requested.

Access permitted by another party is confirmed directly with that party at a change of operator rather than assumed to continue unchanged.

Write down the things you do without thinking, such as the gate that must be lifted before it will close or the switch that is not where anybody expects.

These are invisible to their owner precisely because they have become automatic, and they are what a successor struggles with first.

Note what you have learned the hard way about this facility, including anything you now avoid doing and the reason you avoid it.

Without the reason attached, a successor rediscovers the same lesson by repeating the same mistake.

Record the order you do things in when opening and closing, since the order usually has a reason behind it even when nobody remembers what it is.

Sequences are the part of a routine most easily lost and most often the part that mattered.

Note what you check without being asked to, and why you started checking it in the first place.

Unprompted checks usually began after something went wrong, which makes them worth passing on with their history.

Write down what has gone wrong here before, what happened as a result and who dealt with it.

A successor who knows the history recognises the early signs; one who does not treats each as a first occurrence.

Arrange to go round the facility with the incoming person rather than sending a document and assuming it lands.

Standing in front of something prompts questions that never occur to anybody reading about it.

Show every control, isolator, valve and shut-off in position rather than describing where each of them is.

A walk round covers where things sit and how they are ordinarily used; work on any of them stays with a suitably qualified professional.

Have the incoming person operate whatever they will have to operate while you are still standing next to them.

The gap between watching and doing shows up immediately on site and not at all in a written handover.

Go round once after dark as well, if the facility is used, lit or secured when it is dark.

Lighting, locking and the way the site feels at night can only be handed over at night.

Note anything you cannot explain yourself, and add it to a list of questions for a professional rather than passing on a guess.

A guess passed on at handover becomes established fact within one change of operator; route unexplained items to the installer or a suitably qualified professional.

List every arrangement currently running with a supplier, a contractor or a service provider, and note how each of them was set up.

Arrangements that were set up by conversation rather than paperwork are invisible until something goes wrong with one.

Note which arrangements continue or renew without anybody doing anything, since these are the ones that surprise a successor.

Nothing announces itself less than an arrangement that simply carries on until the moment it does not.

Record which suppliers know the facility by the outgoing person's name and will need telling that has changed.

Suppliers frequently hold the individual rather than the facility as the customer, which quietly breaks at handover.

Note anything held in the outgoing person's own name that cannot simply be reassigned, and raise it with whoever set it up.

Anything held personally rather than by the facility is untangled with the provider concerned and, where it involves obligations, a suitably qualified professional.

Ask your insurer or broker what they need to be told when the running of a facility changes hands.

What a change of operator means for any cover is answered by your insurer or broker alone and should be asked before the change rather than after it.

List the groups who use the facility, how each of them arranged that use and what each has been told to expect.

Arrangements made at different times by different people rarely match, and the mismatch surfaces the moment somebody new is asked.

Note the arrangements agreed verbally that appear nowhere in writing, and say plainly that they were verbal.

A successor who does not know an arrangement was informal will defend it as though it were settled.

Record anything a user group has been promised or reasonably led to expect that has not yet happened.

These come back within a short run of a change of operator, always to somebody who has never heard of them.

Note who among the regular users is worth the incoming person meeting early, because they notice things before anybody else does.

Every facility has two or three people who are effectively its early warning, and they are not always the officials.

Record the neighbours and the history of anything they have raised, so the incoming person is not surprised by a long-running matter.

Any matter still open with a neighbour, a landowner or the local authority is confirmed directly with them rather than passed on as recollection.

List everything currently outstanding, including matters you have raised and had no reply to.

Unanswered items are the easiest to forget and the ones most likely to reappear as a surprise.

Note what is waiting on somebody else, who that person is and when they last responded to anything.

A successor who knows who has gone quiet can chase; one who does not simply starts the whole thing again.

Record what you decided not to do and why, so it is neither quietly reversed nor pointlessly repeated.

Decisions against something leave no trace, which is why the same idea is investigated repeatedly at some facilities.

Note any matter still open with the local authority or the relevant governing body, and how it was last left.

Anything open with an authority or a governing body is confirmed with them directly at a change of operator rather than assumed to have concluded.

Write down what you would deal with next if you were staying, and label it plainly as your own view rather than as an instruction.

This is often the most useful page in a handover, provided it is not mistaken for a settled plan.

Show the incoming person where the records actually live rather than sending a list of what they are supposed to contain.

The location and the arrangement are the parts that never survive a written summary.

Note where the arrangement of the records makes sense to you and to nobody else, and explain those parts out loud.

Personal filing logic is invisible to its author, which is why it is almost never explained unprompted.

Check the incoming person can open every record while you are still there to sort it out if they cannot.

Access problems found after a handover are far harder to solve, because the person who set it up has moved on.

Note which records you have kept in your own way rather than the facility's, and decide what happens to them.

Personal notebooks often hold the fullest history of a facility and are usually taken home without anybody asking.

Record what you have deliberately not kept, so that its absence is not later read as something having been lost.

A successor hunting for records that never existed wastes considerable effort and often assumes the worst.

Agree what the outgoing person will still answer after the change and how they should be contacted about it.

An unspoken arrangement here leads either to constant calls or to nobody feeling able to ask anything at all.

Note that a handover resting on an open line of questions tends to postpone the real transfer indefinitely.

The successor only fully takes it on once they have had to work something out themselves.

Arrange one conversation after the incoming person has actually run the facility, since the useful questions only arrive then.

Questions asked before taking it on are general; questions asked afterwards are specific and far more valuable.

Ask the incoming person to write down what they found missing, and keep that for the next change of operator.

The only person who can see the gaps in a handover is the person who has just received one.

Note what should be corrected in the records as a result, rather than leaving the next person to find exactly the same gaps.

Handover notes that are improved each time are how a facility stops depending on any particular individual.