Handover Contact Information Record Checklist

Go through the property element by element and note which items you would have to ask somebody about, rather than listing the trades you happen to remember.

The trades an owner remembers are the ones who were around longest, which has very little to do with what will need attention.

Note which items are likely to need attention at some point and which you may never touch again, and put the effort into the first group.

A complete list that nobody maintains is quickly abandoned, while a short list of the things that matter tends to stay current.

Ask who actually carried out each part of the work, since a good deal of it will have been done by people you never dealt with or possibly never met.

Owners regularly find that the party they contracted with holds the only record of who was actually on site.

Write down which items were supplied by one party and fitted by another, because that split decides which of them you would approach about a given question.

Supply-and-fit splits are the most common reason an owner is passed back and forth without anything being resolved.

Note where a system crosses several trades, such as something plumbed by one party, wired by another and then finished around by a third.

Where a fault could involve more than one trade, ask the contractor who should be approached first rather than deciding the order yourself.

Record which items you provided yourself rather than through the contractor, since the route back for those is entirely your own to keep.

Owner-supplied items sit outside the contractor's records completely, and their paperwork is the easiest of all to mislay.

Collect contact details while the trades are still on site, since the willingness and the opportunity both fall away once the last van has gone.

Asking during the work is an ordinary request, whereas asking afterwards means tracking somebody down through a third party.

Ask for details in writing rather than copying a number from the side of a van or lifting one out of a message thread you may not keep.

Numbers copied by eye contain errors that only reveal themselves at the moment you need them to work.

Note who gave you each contact, so that you have somewhere to go back to if the details turn out to be wrong or out of date.

A contact with no source becomes a dead end, while one you can trace back can usually be repaired.

Ask each trade what they would want to know when somebody calls about their work, and write that alongside their details rather than separately.

Most calls fail on the first question, and the answer is usually something you could have written down at handover.

Ask whether you should approach each trade directly or go through the main contractor, and record the answer against each entry rather than assuming one rule.

Ask before going round anybody, since the route you are meant to use is part of how the project was set up rather than a matter of convenience.

Note anybody who was on site regularly whose name you never learned, and ask for it before the site closes rather than describing them later.

The person described as the one who did the tiling is impossible to identify once the site has been closed for a while.

Record the company name and the individual you dealt with as separate pieces of information, since people move on while companies continue, and sometimes the other way round.

Either one on its own can lead you back to the work, and having both roughly doubles the chance that one still works.

Ask whether the person who carried out the work was employed by the company or working on their own account under it.

Who you would approach if something needs revisiting depends on the arrangement between them; ask the contractor rather than assuming.

Note how each company identifies itself on its own paperwork, including any trading name alongside its registered name, so it can be traced if the name it uses changes.

Trading names change more often than registered ones, and an owner searching for the wrong one concludes the company has vanished.

Write down a second route to each party where you can, such as an address as well as a number, rather than relying on one line of contact.

Single points of contact fail quietly, and a second route is usually available at handover for the asking.

Ask what would happen if the company you dealt with stopped trading, and who would then hold the information about what was installed.

What happens to any support arrangement if a company ceases trading is set out in its own terms and may involve another party; ask before you need to know.

Note where the same individual appears against several elements of the work, since that person is often the single most useful contact you hold.

One person who saw several parts of the job can usually explain how they relate, which no single-trade contact can.

Record the manufacturer support route for each installed item separately from the installer, since one of the two will very often outlast the other.

The installer answers questions about how it was put in; the manufacturer answers questions about the thing itself.

Note what a manufacturer would ask for before discussing an item, such as its description and where that description is recorded on the item itself.

Manufacturers work from what is printed on the item, which is usually somewhere awkward and worth photographing while access is easy.

Ask which installed items have been registered with a manufacturer and in whose name that registration currently stands.

Whether an item is registered and what that registration provides is a matter for the manufacturer; confirm rather than assuming somebody did it.

Write down the route to each utility and service provider for the property, and keep those entries apart from the project contacts they have nothing to do with.

Mixing them means that in a hurry you scroll past the provider you need while looking through trades who cannot help.

Note where a professional such as an engineer or a designer was involved, since their records may be the only description of what sits behind a finished surface.

Records held by an appointed professional belong to them and may be subject to their own terms; ask what they hold and how it could be obtained.

Record where an item came from a supplier rather than directly from a manufacturer, and note which of the two would deal with a question about it.

Being sent between a supplier and a manufacturer is a common and avoidable waste of time when the answer was known at handover.

Put together a short list of who to contact when something cannot wait, and keep it somewhere findable without a phone, a password or a working power supply.

The situations where this list matters are often the same ones in which the usual way of finding a number is unavailable.

Note which situations you should not attempt to deal with at all, and write on the list who should be contacted in each of those cases instead.

Some situations are for the emergency services or the utility provider and for nobody on your contact list at all; write down plainly which those are.

Record where the isolation points are alongside the contact for each system, since both pieces of information are needed at exactly the same moment.

A number without knowing where to turn something off is only half of what somebody standing in the situation actually needs.

Ask each trade whether they deal with anything outside ordinary working hours and, where they do not, who they would suggest is approached instead.

Whether anybody attends outside ordinary hours is entirely their own arrangement; do not assume a contact will be available when it matters.

Make sure somebody other than you can find the short list, particularly where the property is sometimes occupied by other people in your absence.

A list only one person knows about fails precisely in the circumstances it was written for.

Note what each provider asks for before they will attend, such as how the property is identified on their system or which account it sits under.

Being asked for something you cannot supply is the usual reason a call takes far longer than it should.

Read the list through whenever you go through the rest of the handover paperwork, and take out anything you already know to be wrong rather than leaving it half correct.

A list that is partly wrong is trusted in exactly the same way as one that is right, which is what makes it worse than an empty one.

Note where a company has changed its name or been taken over, and keep the earlier name alongside the new one rather than replacing it.

Your paperwork will carry the old name, so removing it makes your own documents harder to match up later.

Record when each contact was last used successfully, since that is the only honest indication of whether it still leads anywhere.

Entries with no date of last use all look equally reliable, and most of them are not.

Keep the record somewhere it survives a change of phone or of email account, rather than only in a device that will eventually be replaced.

Contact records are lost far more often to a change of handset than to anything happening at the property.

Add new entries as further work is carried out, so the record describes the property as it now is rather than as it was on the day of handover.

A record frozen at handover becomes steadily less useful as later trades alter what the original ones installed.

Note in plain terms when you have stopped dealing with somebody and why, rather than simply deleting the entry and leaving an unexplained gap.

A gap invites somebody later to go looking for a contact that you had already decided not to use.

Keep the contact record with the rest of the handover paperwork rather than in a personal address book, so it travels with the property information.

Anything kept only among personal contacts leaves with the owner, and the next occupant starts from nothing.

Write each entry so it makes sense to somebody who never met the person, saying what they did and where, rather than recording only a name and a number.

A list of names means nothing to a later owner, who cannot tell the roofer from the person who laid the floor.

Note which contacts relate to items that will remain with the property when it changes hands, and which relate to things you will be taking with you.

Separating the two saves a later owner from chasing somebody about an appliance that left in a van.

Ask each party whether they are content to be approached by a later owner about the work they carried out, and record what they said rather than what you hope.

Whether anybody will deal with a later owner is entirely their own decision and may depend on their arrangements; never promise anything on their behalf.

Record what each party did and when, and avoid describing anybody as approved, checked or endorsed, since your record is an account rather than an assessment.

A record that reads as a recommendation will be relied on as one, including by people who have no way of knowing what it was based on.

Hand the record over as part of the property information rather than as a favour remembered on the day of the move, when nothing gets read carefully.

Anything handed over at the last moment is put in a box, and boxes packed on moving day are not opened again for a long while.