Digital handover in Ireland
Most handovers still travel by email, file-sharing links and ring binders. Each specialist sends its O&M manuals, certificates and as-builts in its own way, and someone on the main contractor’s team spends the final weeks matching attachments against a list. A digital handover gives every firm one place to file its own documents, lets the client’s team see what has arrived, and leaves a set that can still be used once the building is occupied. This page sets out how that runs in Fidrel on an Irish project, from giving the mechanical contractor its folders to passing the finished set to the client, and where Fidrel stops.
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The mechanical contractor sends a download link that expires after a week, the lift installer posts a USB stick, and the electrical contractor attaches forty PDFs across four emails. Before anyone can review a single manual, someone has to download, rename and file it all, and which version reaches the client depends on which email was opened last.
The as-built drawings already sit in the project’s document control at their latest revision, yet the handover set is often assembled from fresh exports at the very end. When the architect issues one more revision after that export, the client inherits a drawing the project itself has already superseded.
A ring binder or a ZIP file answers the questions asked on the day of practical completion. Two years on, when a pump fails or a warranty claim falls due, the estates team needs the manual for that particular piece of plant, and a folder named after a subcontractor does not lead them to it.
In Fidrel the handover is not a separate portal that receives a copy at the end. Facilities management is an area of the same project that holds the design and construction documents, with its own sections: Overview, Fault reports, Statutory inspections, Asset register, Warranties & contracts, Handover and Documents. The documents the firms deliver land in its folders, the handover checklist follows them line by line, and the registers the client will use to run the building sit beside them from the first day. On a project started from the Irish site, the folders and the sixteen checklist lines come from the Irish template, whoever opens them.
Operations
A firm invited to chosen folders gets those folders with everything in them and does not see the other folders of the project. With a role that allows it, the firm uploads and works there; otherwise it can only view and download. The firm never sees the handover checklist, which needs the whole facilities area, so your notes on what is late stay with your own team. Under Access & privacy a folder can also be kept to administrators or to selected members, and that restriction covers its subfolders and files.
Step 1
A project administrator creates the facilities folders once. On a project started from Fidrel’s Irish site they run from 01 Safety file to 14 Property management, and they can be renamed, moved or deleted later.
Step 2
Invite the mechanical contractor with Only chosen folders and tick the folders it delivers into, such as Mechanical under 04 O&M manuals and Commissioning records under 05 Commissioning and certificates. Then choose whether it can upload and work there or only view and download.
Step 3
The firm uploads into its folders on the facilities Documents page, or drops a whole folder or ZIP file into the Import centre, which keeps the folder structure and reads each document’s number and title from the file name.
Step 4
Instead of asking for the as-built drawings again, an administrator copies their current revision from the project’s folders into the facilities folders. Each copy keeps its number and revision and shows when the project has a newer one.
Step 5
A project administrator, or a member with the right to manage facilities management, moves each handover line from Outstanding to Submitted, Approved or Not applicable. Approving records the name and the date, and the bar above the list counts approved lines against those that apply.
Specialists rarely hand over one file at a time. The Import centre in the facilities menu takes a whole folder or a ZIP file: up to 5,000 files and 5 GB per import, a ZIP of up to 1 GB, and files of up to 50 MB each, or 512 MB for an IFC model. Folders are kept and merged with existing folders of the same name, documents that already exist are skipped or added as a new version if you prefer, and everything is reviewed before anything is saved. A firm given only some folders imports into those folders and nowhere else.
Drawings that went through the project’s document control should not have to be uploaded again for handover. From the facilities Documents page an administrator chooses project documents and copies their current revision into a facilities folder. The copy keeps the document number and revision and says which revision of the project it came from. If the architect later issues a newer revision, the copy shows it, and the newer revision can be fetched into the facilities folder from there. The project keeps its own documents throughout.
What makes O&M manuals useful after handover is being able to reach the right one from the piece of plant. Each entry in the asset register holds an asset tag, system, location, manufacturer, model, serial number, installation date, a Warranty until date and a service interval, and it can link several documents, such as a pump’s O&M manual and its commissioning record. An asset can also carry its IFC GUID, the 22-character identity from the BIM model, for finding the object in the model. Entries are added one at a time with New asset, so the register is only as complete as the information the firms supply.
When the client, an owners’ management company or an incoming property manager needs the whole set, the Export centre in the facilities menu downloads the chosen folders as one ZIP file with the folder structure kept and, if ticked, a CSV list giving each file’s folder, name, title, number, revision, status and size. Each person exports only what they may read, and only current versions. The set can also stay live in Fidrel: an administrator can share an operations package, a single folder that a maintenance contractor or facilities manager is invited to and sees on its own, either as a guest who reads and downloads or as a reader who can also comment.
Fidrel does not merge the specialists’ files into one bound O&M manual; each manual stays the document its author uploaded. Fidrel produces no COBie file and builds no digital twin of the building. A handover line sends no reminder to the firm that owes it; a missed due date shows only as overdue on the checklist. Approving a line is a name and a date in the register, not a signature, and it certifies nothing about what the document says. The sixteen Irish lines are a starting point, and Fidrel does not say which documents your contract requires.
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Read moreDigital handover in Ireland
Anything else on your mind? We are happy to help.
Talk to usNo. Fidrel is priced per project with unlimited participants, so inviting the specialists does not add to the project’s price. Each invited person signs in with a Fidrel account of their own, which the invitation takes them through.
Not when you invite it to chosen folders. It sees the folders you picked and what is in them, not the rest of the project, and it never sees the handover checklist or your notes on it.
The copy in the facilities folder shows that the project now holds a newer revision, and an administrator can fetch that revision, so the client’s set does not quietly fall behind the project.
Yes. A bound PDF is filed like any other document. A manual that arrives as dozens of separate files can go in as a folder or a ZIP file through the Import centre, with its structure kept.
No. The Export centre produces a ZIP file with the folders kept and a CSV list of the files, which opens on any computer. If the client prefers, its team can be invited to keep running the building in the same project.
Yes, once that asset is in the asset register with its documents linked. The register can be searched by name, tag, system or location, and each asset lists the documents attached to it.
