Project Management

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Record Retention Policy

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Mary Radke Other| Stock Yards Bank Charlestown, In, United States
Looking for guidance for record retention of project files, particularly in the financial services sector.  How long to keep project files such as project plans, task lists, charters, issues logs and risk registers, decision logs, meeting minutes, lessons learned, etc...  Can't find any great guidance anywhere and so thought I would reach out to see what the PM committee at large thought.  
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Mary, normally, this is heavily dependent on two things: (Whichever is longer)

1) Client or Organization's requirements and policies.
2) Contractual Terms

Different organizations have different retention periods and so does each type of contract so it is not a one-size-fit all or industry standard.

From my own experience, we retain documents anywhere from 1 to 5 years, it varies.
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Mary -

I'd add industry regulatory requirements to Rami's list above, especially for FinServ given the number of external regulators who might set their own retention requirements.

Kiron
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Keith Novak Tukwila, Wa, United States
It also depends on the type of records. Financial records frequently must be kept for 5-7 years in the US. Keeping related business documents for the same period is often advisable in the event of an audit in which case the project files may back up the information in the financial records.

Project records must sometimes be kept for the service life of the product which can be much longer. Sometimes, rather than trying to parse out which documents must be kept and for how long, it is less expensive to hire an external service to maintain the records indefinitely.
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Thomas Walenta Global Project Economy Expert Hackenheim, Germany

There may also be legal requirements.

I once had a case where the tax authorities asked for signed time sheets of a project contractor - 8 years after the project ended. In Germany, some financial records expire only after 10 years.



And yes, my employer could retrieve the time sheets from a microfiche which was created during archiving of project records.

Better ask a lawyer.
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Verónica Elizabeth Pozo Ruiz RYLAI Access Control Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador
Records retention may require storing documents for one, two, three, or ten years. In some cases, you need to keep records forever. It depends of the type of information you're saving, the guidelines of your enterprise, and even the laws or contracts that are related.
You also need to consult an IT specialist to acquire adequate hardware for servers and storage.

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