Documents Supplied for Post-HOTO

 

The contract may require the project team to deliver the following, which could be the final documents or mere guidelines for the taking-over team to expand or improve upon. These are typical:

1. Security Management Plan (SMP) – presents all aspects of security i.e. cyber and physical, which may include matters on health and safety; the latter can be a separate document.
2. Maintenance Plan (MP) – include Analysis of Performance templates.
3. Troubleshooting Guide and-or Recovery Plan – note that knowing the problem doesn't mean being able to recover fully to normalcy.
4. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
5. Training & Exercise Plan
6. Certificates & Certifications – more like a plan to track and update on claims/long term tasks.

When human resources are involved upon handling over a project to business operations, it would be prudent for the project team to consider and present on matters such as on training and certifications. Some pointers on the emphasis, include:

Trainings & Exercises

• Train new personnel, or train for succession particularly when experts are few and they perform mostly on tacit knowledge.
• Update on lessons learned. Organizational support for this process is crucial for lessons to be recorded honestly and factually.
• Improve on maintenance operations. How effective is this process (if it exist) without lessons learned? And sufficient data.
• Practice troubleshooting and recovery of operations including recovery from disaster. Do they?
• Practice handling extraordinary incidents such as emergency evacuation, lockdown, and attack in-situ. It is a question of when it will happen, not if. Don't sweep this topic under the carpet!

Certificates & Certifications

• Competencies of personnel – e.g. may require biennial renewals. This may include certification on health for certain job roles, as well as background checks (could be periodic) for some industries.
• Fit for use e.g. that appliances are calibrated – may require recalibration after certain duration or frequency of usage.
• Licenses e.g. on use of software, from authorities to operate, etc. You wouldn't want a software lockout disaster, because nobody knows there's that license and the software vendor was unable to remind/reach anyone to collect subscription, to renew the license.
• Permits e.g. for personnel to access restricted areas, draw power from certain supply sources within a campus, etc
• Lifespan of e.g. appliances, infrastructure elements, etc. Similar to licenses, you wouldn't want a hardware crash to discover there is no more support or worse- no replacement for the product range.

 See my notes for training on –

• Notes on Handling Over & Taking Over
• Typical project documents for submission (on LinkedIn)