Planning & documents
What is a project handover?
Project handover is the transfer of a completed structure and the information about it to the client — including the health and safety file and the information needed to operate and maintain it safely.
Use this diagram+
Free to use on your own site, in training material or in a handout, as long as the credit link stays on it. Paste this where you want the diagram to appear.
<figure>
<img src="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/handover/diagram.svg" alt="project handover — diagram from BuildOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
<figcaption>
<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/handover">What is a project handover?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk">BuildOptix</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>The information is the part that survives. The building outlasts everyone involved in building it, and what is handed over is all a future team will have.
Assembling it at the end is what makes it painful and incomplete. Information gathered as the work happens is accurate; information reconstructed at practical completion is whatever people can still find.
As-built information matters more than design information, because the difference between them is precisely where a future contractor gets caught out.
What goes wrong in practice
- Assembled in the final weeks from whatever subcontractors still have.
- Design drawings handed over where the build departed from them.
- Handed to whoever signed for it, with the operating team never told it exists.