Acceptance conditions, the owners who take charge, the documentation that has to stay current and the open items with a date, all handled as a single case file — from the receiving team's decision, whether that is to accept, accept with open items, return for correction or reject, through to confirmation of the final open item where the acceptance was conditional.
01 · The problem
The project team finishes execution and declares the handover. On the receiving side, operations, support and maintenance find that the procedure they were given is not the current version, that nobody was named for second-level support, that the training went to people who have since changed roles, or that the start-up observations still have no owner and no date. The schedule shows the project as complete while, in practice, it is still running: for months afterwards, the questions go back to the team that built it.
The handover is run on whatever is at hand: a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet listing the deliverables, Microsoft SharePoint folders holding manuals in several versions, an email thread where support ownership was agreed verbally, and Microsoft Power BI reporting on project progress. Each of these does its own job well, and none of them records which acceptance condition is still outstanding today, who was meant to close it, by when, and who formally accepted the service.
The date a project ends and the date operations can take charge are two different dates, and they rarely coincide.
02 · The solution
The handover is managed through a single case file with an agreed sequence: acceptance conditions are set before execution ends, each condition is checked against its evidence, the owners who will run the service are named, and the receiving team decides — accept, accept with open items on record, return for correction, or reject with stated grounds. Where it accepts with open items, operations takes the service on from the recorded date and the case file remains open for follow-up until every open item has a confirmed resolution.
Each handover is built on what the Operational Graph already holds as approved: the service or asset being taken on, the processes that will depend on it, the documentation that has to stay current, the owners for operations, support and maintenance, and the dependencies that come with it. BPMflow supports the workflow — cases, conditions, deadlines, authorizations and evidence — so the conditions and deadlines remain explicit and traceable, instead of living in a checklist inside a spreadsheet.
The decision that gave rise to the initiative — criteria, prioritization and approved conditions — comes in through Demand and Portfolio Governance. When the handover includes third-party work on an asset, each job has a separate acceptance decision in Contractors, Assets and Interventions. And the operational responsibility agreed here is what later gets tested in Operational Continuity & Resilience.
03 · Capabilities
Handovers sit in a single queue, showing the service or asset involved, the conditions met and still outstanding, the named owners and the open items coming due. Max answers questions about the case file within the authorized context: it explains which condition is missing, shows the evidence on record and proposes the next owner.
Sets out, while execution is still running, which conditions must be met before operations takes over and which may remain open under a conditional acceptance: documentation, training, access, contracted support, spare parts or reference data, depending on the type of handover.
Every condition is checked against a current document, a recorded test result or a named owner's confirmation. A condition with no evidence stays visible as outstanding instead of passing as met by default.
Records who takes on daily operation, who answers at each support level and who maintains the asset or system, with the date that responsibility starts and the scope it covers.
Links procedures, manuals, drawings, configurations and support contracts to the service or asset being handed over, with the version identified, instead of leaving them as loose files in a shared folder.
Anything accepted before it is resolved is recorded as an open item, with an owner, a committed date and a resolution criterion. If it reaches that date unresolved, it escalates to the agreed owner and the deadline is renegotiated with the reason on record, rather than fading away once the project team disbands.
Records the receiving team's decision — accept, accept with open items, return for correction or reject — and the items left open. Acceptance with nothing outstanding closes on the record; conditional acceptance closes once the final item has been resolved and its resolution confirmed by the authorized owner or designated system; a reasoned rejection closes with its grounds and no transfer; a return for correction keeps the handover open. The case file stays available to operations and to the next handover.
04 · Roles
Receives the service and makes the acceptance decision.
What they see
Handovers coming up for acceptance, the conditions met and still outstanding, the current documentation and the owners proposed for their area.
What they do
Accepts, accepts with open items on record — taking the service on while follow-up continues — returns it for correction, or rejects it with stated grounds, and confirms the date operations takes over.
Takes on the running service and the workload that comes with it.
What they see
Which service or asset they will support, with which procedures, access and tools, and which open items they inherit, with their dates.
What they do
Checks that what was delivered can actually be supported, flags what is missing, and takes the service into scope once the blocking conditions are met, with any accepted open items in view.
Prepares the handover and answers for its conditions.
What they see
The status of every acceptance condition, the evidence gathered, the observations still open and the agreed deadline for resolving them.
What they do
Gathers the evidence, resolves or renegotiates open items, requests acceptance, and addresses items returned for correction by the receiving team.
Supplies evidence and resolves the issues assigned to them.
What they see
Their deliverables, the observations they must resolve and the open items assigned to them, in their own case file with scoped access.
What they do
Supplies documentation and test results, responds to observations, and records how each of those items was resolved.
05 · Implementation
Implementation starts from one specific handover that is already coming up: the essential context of that service and its receiving team is enough, without requiring an architecture project up front.
1 · Agree on the outcome
Which handovers are in scope — a system, a facility, a line, a service — which conditions each type calls for, which open items can be accepted without blocking acceptance, and who signs for operations, support and maintenance.
2 · Capture the context and connect source systems
Pulls the service or asset and its dependencies from the operational inventory and the execution status from the project management tool, and works with the organization's authorized document repository when that is the source for manuals and procedures.
3 · Test the workflow and adopt it
The workflow is tested on a handover from the current period; conditions, deadlines and acceptance criteria are then refined, and day-to-day running stays with the client team.
06 · Typical scenarios
Several sites, suppliers delivering in stages, receiving teams that took no part in the design, projects finishing right at the close of the period: this is common across a portfolio of initiatives. The scenarios below are illustrative.
A handover is closed once the receiving team has decided with the evidence in front of it: an acceptance with nothing outstanding closes as it is recorded; a conditional acceptance closes once the final open item is resolved against the agreed criterion and confirmed by the authorized owner or the designated system; a rejection with stated grounds closes it with the reason on record and no transfer. A return for correction closes nothing — the case file stays open. The practical way in is to start with one handover type and a single receiving team.
Project Handover to Operations is an EAFlow cross-industry solution on the Operational Graph, supported by BPMflow's automation capabilities. The project management tool owns the plan and its progress, the service desk owns ongoing support, and the EAM/CMMS owns the asset record: this workflow brings together the acceptance conditions, the evidence and the receiving team's decision. Accepting a contractor's work on an asset and testing continuity plans are separate workflows on the same foundation.
