Facility Utility Account Record Checklist

List every service that reaches the site, including the ones with no meter, such as surface water drainage, waste collection and any shared connection.

Unmetered services are the ones nobody records, and they surface only when the arrangement behind them changes.

Note which services arrive through a connection and which arrive by delivery, such as bottled gas, a tank or water brought onto the site.

Delivered services depend on somebody ordering them and on a vehicle being able to reach the store, which is a different record entirely.

Note anything that runs from a neighbouring building rather than from a connection of its own, and write down who agreed that and when.

Supplies borrowed from a pavilion or a school are common, undocumented, and a problem at the moment of the first fault.

Note whether any connectivity is provided to the site and what depends on it, such as controls, an alarm, a gate or a booking screen.

Nobody treats connectivity as a utility until something that quietly relied on it stops working.

Write down which services were connected as part of the build and which were already on the site beforehand.

Anything predating the build usually has no paperwork attached to it, and knowing that early saves a search later.

Note any service that was applied for but never actually connected, and record where that application now stands and with whom.

Abandoned applications sit unresolved for a long time and are remembered only by whoever made them.

Record, for each service, the organisation or individual the account stands in, exactly as it is written on the account paperwork.

The name on the paperwork is what a supplier will work from, and it is often not the name the group uses for itself.

Note where an account is still in the name of a builder, a previous occupier or a volunteer who has since stepped back from the organisation.

An account left in the name of somebody who has moved on blocks the simplest enquiry, because the supplier will not discuss it with anybody else.

Ask what a change of account holder involves for each service, and write down what each supplier tells you rather than assuming they are the same.

Each service handles a change differently, and finding that out calmly beats discovering it during a fault.

Note which accounts are administered online and where the access details are held, without writing those details into this record.

Access held by one person is the most common single point of failure in a facility service record.

Note which accounts are held by a landlord, a school or a parent body rather than by the operator of the facility.

Where somebody else holds the account, the operator cannot report a fault directly, and that route needs establishing in advance.

Write down who receives correspondence for each account and whether that address still reaches anybody in the organisation.

Correspondence going to a former secretary address is how notices about a supply stop being read.

Photograph each meter in position with enough of the surroundings visible that somebody who has never been to the site could find it.

Close-up photographs of a meter face are useless for locating it, which is the thing the next person will actually need.

Record the identifying number shown on each meter exactly as it is printed, keeping it alongside the photograph of that meter.

Every enquiry about a supply starts from that identifier, and reading it off a photograph beats a walk across a dark site.

Record and photograph the reading on each meter at the point the facility is taken on, keeping the date together with the image.

The opening reading can only be captured once, and its absence is discovered when somebody queries the account.

Note which meters sit inside a locked cupboard, chamber or building, and record who holds the key or the cover lifter for each one.

A meter behind a lock held by somebody else is a delay at exactly the moment when nobody wants one.

Note whether any sub-meter serves part of the site, and write down which area each one actually covers.

Sub-meters are installed for a reason that is quickly forgotten unless somebody writes down what each one was put in for.

Note where a meter or a chamber sits on ground the facility does not control, and whose permission is needed to reach it.

Whether the facility may cross land in other ownership to reach equipment is a question for a suitably qualified adviser, not an assumption.

Ask the installer to show you where each supply can be shut off, and record the position of every point with a photograph.

What may be operated, and by whom, is for a suitably qualified professional to state for this particular installation.

Note whether each shut-off point can be reached without a key, a ladder or entry into another building.

A point that can only be reached through a building belonging to somebody else is worth knowing about long before it matters.

Ask what an operator should not attempt without a qualified professional, and record that answer beside each point in the same record.

Nothing here describes how to operate, isolate or work on any supply; that instruction comes only from a suitably qualified professional.

Note whether the shut-off points are labelled and whether the labelling matches what the equipment actually serves, as described by the installer.

Labels inherited from an earlier arrangement are worse than no labels, and only the installer can say what is correct.

Note who else is able to reach the shut-off points, including a caretaker, a landlord or an occupier of a neighbouring building.

On shared sites other people can affect your supply, and that is easier to establish before it happens than afterwards.

Write down which parts of the site lose supply at each point, as described to you by the installer rather than worked out on site.

This is the single most useful line in a service record and the one most often missing from a handover.

Ask who to contact when the supply itself fails, as against when the fault sits with equipment on the site, and record both routes separately.

Reporting a supply failure to the wrong organisation loses time, and the distinction is not obvious from a fault on site.

Write down what the person answering will ask for, such as the account details or the meter identifier, and keep that beside the number.

Having the identifier to hand turns a difficult call into a short one, and it is the reason for photographing the meter.

Note who at the facility is expected to make that call, and who does it when that person is away or unreachable.

Reporting routes that run through one volunteer stop working the moment that person steps back or goes away.

Note whether a failure at this site would also affect a school, a neighbour or another user group, and who would tell them.

On shared sites the first person to notice is rarely the person who can act, and nobody has agreed who passes it on.

Keep a written record of every loss of supply, what was found and who attended, filed where the organisation keeps its papers rather than on a personal phone.

A pattern of repeated failures is only visible in a record, and it is the first thing a professional will ask about.

Ask each supplier what arrangements exist for being told in advance about planned interruptions, and record what applies at this site.

A planned interruption arriving unannounced during a booked session is avoidable if somebody has asked in advance.

Note every service shared with another occupier and write down how use of it is apportioned between the parties.

Apportionment agreed informally is remembered differently by each side, and only a written note settles it.

Note who is able to switch off a shared supply and whether the facility would be told before that happened.

On a shared supply somebody else can leave your facility without power, and nobody agrees the courtesy in advance.

Ask whose consent is needed before anything new is connected to a shared supply, and record who gave the answer.

Whether anything may be connected to an existing supply is for a suitably qualified professional to establish and for the account holder to agree.

Note what else runs from the same supply, such as a pavilion, a pump, a gate, a store or an alarm.

Everything sharing a supply becomes part of the conversation the moment anything new is proposed to run from it.

Write down what was agreed about the shared supply and with whom, rather than leaving it as an understanding between two individuals.

Understandings between individuals do not survive either of them leaving, which is when shared supplies become disputes.

Note whether the shared arrangement is written into a lease, a licence or a site agreement, and where that document is held.

Clauses covering services in a lease or licence are read by a suitably qualified adviser, not settled around a committee table.

Decide where this record lives so that it is not held only on a single device or inside a private message thread nobody else can open.

Service details lost with a departing volunteer have to be rebuilt from suppliers who will not talk to the new person.

Agree who updates the record when a supplier, an account holder or a contact changes, and note that responsibility beside the record itself.

Records without a named keeper drift out of date quietly and are trusted right up until they are needed.

Note what has to be added to the record whenever new equipment is connected to any supply at the facility.

Equipment added after opening is the part of an installation that nobody documents and everybody later asks about.

Include the meter photographs, opening readings and fault contacts in whatever is handed to the next operator or committee.

This record is most valuable to somebody who did not assemble it, which is the test of whether it was worth making.

Note which parts of the record are missing and mark them plainly as unknown rather than leaving a blank line.

A blank looks like nothing to do; an item marked unknown is a question somebody can pick up.

Ask the installer of each system what they expect an operator to keep about that service, and add it to this record.

What an installation requires by way of records and attendance is stated by the installer or the manufacturer, not assumed by the operator.