Document Version Control Planning Checklist

Choose one location as the home of the project record and write down what it is, so material is never filed by whichever device happens to be nearest.

Records split across a laptop, a phone and a shared folder are not three copies but three incomplete records, and none of them can be trusted.

Decide what belongs in the record and what does not, and write that rule down, so filing decisions do not have to be made afresh each time.

Without a rule, everything gets filed or nothing does, and both make the record unusable in different ways.

Set up the folder structure before documents start arriving in quantity, since restructuring later means handling every item a second time.

Structures imposed after the fact are always partial, because nobody goes back through the material that was already filed somewhere else.

Keep the structure shallow enough that filing something takes moments, because a structure that is tiring to use simply stops being used.

Elaborate folder trees are abandoned quickly under pressure, and everything ends up in the inbox instead.

Avoid trying to mirror the system a professional practice uses, and ask instead how their material will be given to you.

Ask the appointed professionals how they issue and store documents rather than assuming your arrangement matches or replaces theirs.

Put the document reference, its issue marking and its date into the file name itself, rather than relying on the folder it sits in to explain it.

Folders vanish the moment a file is attached to a message, and the name is all the recipient will ever see.

Begin file names with the date written so that files sort into order on their own, using the same pattern every time without exception.

Consistent date-first naming makes a folder readable as a sequence, which is how project material is almost always searched.

Keep the sender's own reference in the name rather than replacing it with your own description, and add your description after it.

Renaming a file away from the reference the issuer uses makes it impossible to discuss the document with them.

Avoid words such as final, latest or updated in a name, since every one of them will eventually be followed by another file claiming the same thing.

Names describing status rather than identity always collapse, usually at the point when something matters.

Name the documents you produce yourself to the same pattern, and mark them clearly as yours so they are never mistaken for issued material.

Owner-produced material circulating alongside issued documents causes confusion on site; make the distinction obvious in the name itself.

Rename a file the moment you file it rather than intending to tidy up later, because the context you need to name it correctly disappears quickly.

A folder of files named by other people is effectively unsearchable, and nobody ever goes back to fix it.

Decide which channels count as part of the record, and tell everybody involved which one you will treat as the place things are said properly.

Where no channel has been named, important things are said in whichever one was open, and nobody can find them afterwards.

Move anything of substance from a messaging thread into the record itself, since threads are hard to search and easy to lose with a device.

Ask the appointed professionals how instructions and confirmations should properly be issued rather than leaving them in a messaging app.

Organise site photographs by location and date rather than leaving them in the order the camera stored them, and do it while you still know where each was taken.

Photographs are worthless as a record the moment nobody can say which wall, room or storey they show.

Take progress photographs from a few consistent positions each time, and include enough of the surroundings to show where you were standing.

Close-up images of an opened-up area cannot be located afterwards, however clear the detail in them is.

Write down the substance of any voice note or telephone conversation, since audio is not searchable and does not survive a change of device.

Voice notes feel like a record while they are on the phone that received them and disappear entirely when it is replaced.

Note anything you were shown during a call or on a device and never sent afterwards, and ask for a copy while the conversation is still recent.

Material seen and never issued shapes what everybody believes was agreed and leaves no trace in anybody's record.

Never save a new issue over an earlier one, even where the change appears trivial, since the earlier version is the only evidence of what changed.

Overwriting removes the ability to establish what anybody was looking at when a decision was taken.

Move superseded material into a clearly marked place of its own rather than leaving it beside the current documents.

Old and current documents sitting together is how somebody ends up working confidently from a sheet that was replaced long ago.

Mark superseded material so plainly that it cannot be picked up by mistake, including in any copy that has been printed.

Ask the issuing professional how they mark superseded documents, and never mark an issued sheet yourself as though the marking were theirs.

Write a short note of why a document was replaced and by what, since a folder of issues shows that something changed but never why.

The reason for a revision is the thing you will want later, and it exists nowhere unless somebody writes it down.

Record only the status you were told and by whom, rather than deciding for yourself that a document has been replaced.

Whether a document has been superseded is a statement for whoever issued it; ask them rather than concluding it from a later file.

Decide whether people you share material with can only read it or can also change it, and set that up deliberately rather than by default.

Shared folders where everybody can edit lose files quietly, and nobody can establish who moved or replaced what.

Keep your own notes, queries and drafts separate from anything shared, so material you have not finished thinking about is not read as a position.

Owner drafts read by others become commitments, and half-formed queries circulate as though they were requests.

Keep a note of who has access to which material, and revisit it when somebody leaves the project or their part of the work is finished.

Access is granted quickly at the start and almost never reviewed, so it accumulates long after it is needed.

Avoid treating a shared folder as the way documents are issued to you, unless everybody has agreed that placing a file there counts as issuing it.

Placing a file in a folder is not the same as issuing it; ask the appointed professionals how they confirm that a document has been issued to you.

Ask what happens to a shared folder or platform at the end of the work, and whether you will still be able to reach the material in it.

Access to a platform operated by another party may not continue; ask what will be handed over to you and in what form.

Keep a second copy of the record somewhere independent of the first, so a lost device or an inaccessible account does not take everything with it.

Project records are built up over a long stretch of work and are effectively impossible to reconstruct once lost.

Open a few files from the second copy occasionally rather than assuming it works, since a copy nobody has tested is only a hope.

Copies that appear to have been made but are empty, partial or unreadable are more common than most people expect.

Keep documents in forms that can be opened without the particular application that made them, especially for anything you want to keep long term.

A record you cannot open is the same as a record you do not have, and the tool that made it may not still be available.

Make sure the copy includes messages and photographs, not only formal documents, since those are the parts stored on personal devices.

Backups usually cover the tidy part of the record and miss exactly the material that recorded what actually happened.

Write down where the second copy is and how it is reached, and tell one other person you trust, so the record is not tied to your memory alone.

A copy nobody else knows about protects the project only for as long as you are available to find it.

Write a short index explaining what each part of the record contains and where the current documents are, and keep it at the top of the structure.

A structure that made sense while you were building it becomes opaque quite quickly, and the index is what rescues it.

Keep a plain running list of what happened and when, so the record can be read in order rather than by opening folders at random.

Sequence is the thing folders destroy, and it is usually the thing anybody looking at the record afterwards needs first.

Record who each party is and what they were engaged to do, since names and firms appear throughout the record without explanation.

A record full of names that mean nothing to the reader cannot be followed, however complete it otherwise is.

Write down any shorthand or abbreviation you have adopted for rooms, areas or documents, so your own filing remains legible later.

Personal shorthand invented in the first busy stretch of a project is genuinely hard to decode afterwards.

File the answer you received alongside the question you asked, rather than keeping questions and replies in separate places.

An answer read without its question is frequently misunderstood, particularly where the reply was brief.

Ask each party what material you should expect to receive at the end of the work, and record the answers before anybody leaves the project.

Ask the appointed professionals which records they will hand over, and raise with the relevant authority anything you are told to keep for it.

Collect instructions and information for installed items as they arrive rather than at the end, when the person who had them has moved on.

Paperwork for individual items is the material most reliably lost, because it arrives loose and is never anybody's responsibility.

Ask which documents represent what was actually built, and keep those distinctly from earlier proposals in the record.

Only the professionals and contractor involved can say whether a document reflects the finished work; do not decide that yourself.

Keep the record of changes and instructions with the final documents, since the final drawings alone do not explain how the project got there.

Questions arising after completion are almost always about why something is as it is, which only the history answers.

Ask your own legal adviser how long you should keep the project record and in what form, rather than deciding when to clear it out yourself.

Retention of project records can matter legally and varies; take the question to your own legal adviser rather than judging it yourself.