Project Handover Template

What is a project handover template?

A project handover template is a structured document for transferring all essential project knowledge from one team or manager to another. It captures the current status, outstanding deliverables, key contacts, open risks, and critical decisions — so the receiving party has everything they need to take ownership without disruption.

Project handovers are high-risk moments. When they go wrong, work is duplicated, commitments are missed, and stakeholder relationships suffer. The outgoing team knows things that are not written down — informal agreements, escalation preferences, and context behind past decisions. A structured template forces this tacit knowledge onto paper before the transfer happens, reducing the gap between what the outgoing team knows and what the incoming team receives.

Who should use this template?

This template is for teams managing transitions of project ownership:

• Project Managers — document project status and transfer ownership when moving to a new assignment or leaving the organisation
• Programme Managers — ensure consistent handover quality across multiple projects in a programme
• Operations Managers — receive projects into BAU operations with full context on what was built and why
• Team Leads — facilitate internal handovers when project responsibilities shift between team members

What’s included in this template?

The template has two parts: structured metadata fields and the handover body.

Metadata fields classify each handover:

• Project name and reference
• Outgoing owner and incoming owner
• Handover date and transition period
• Handover status (preparation, in progress, completed)

Handover body transfers all project knowledge:

• Project summary — objectives, scope, current phase, and overall status
• Outstanding deliverables — tasks remaining with deadlines, owners, and dependencies
• Key contacts — stakeholder map with roles, communication preferences, and relationship notes
• Open risks and issues — active risks with mitigation status and unresolved issues requiring attention
• Critical decisions log — major decisions made during the project with rationale and implications
• Document index — links to project plans, budgets, contracts, and technical documentation

How to create and customise this template in Elium

1. Open the Template Builder — Go to your profile menu and select the Template Builder tab, or click “+ Create” and choose “Create a new template”.
2. Set the scope — Choose an icon, enable the template, and decide whether it applies platform-wide or to specific spaces (e.g. Project Management or Operations).
3. Add structured fields — Click “Field” to add metadata: text fields for project name and reference, user fields for outgoing and incoming owners, a date field for handover date, and a tag field for status (pre-populate with “Preparation”, “In Progress”, “Completed”). Mark project name and both owner fields as mandatory.
4. Build the handover structure — Use the “+” button to add content blocks: a text block for project summary, a table block for outstanding deliverables (columns: task, deadline, owner, dependency), a table block for key contacts, text blocks for open risks and critical decisions, and a links block for the document index.
5. Preview and save — Review the template layout, then save. Project managers can now select it when preparing a handover, and you can apply it to existing content in bulk.

How AI helps you create and use this template

Capture faster. Point Elium’s AI at your project documentation — status reports, risk registers, and stakeholder lists. It compiles the key information into a structured handover document so the outgoing manager reviews and supplements rather than writing from scratch.

Retrieve smarter. An incoming project manager asks Elium’s AI: “Why did we change the structural design approach on the Brussels North project?” The AI returns the specific decision record with rationale, alternatives considered, and implications — context that would otherwise be lost.

Why teams use Elium for project handovers

Every project handover risks knowledge loss. The outgoing manager has context that exists nowhere else — stakeholder preferences, informal agreements, and the reasoning behind key decisions. When handovers happen through a single meeting and an email, critical context is lost. Elium makes handovers thorough: structured templates ensure nothing is missed, completed handovers become reference material, and search lets the incoming team find answers as questions arise.

Bouygues Construction — 53,500 employees across 80 countries — uses Elium to centralise project knowledge. When project managers transition between assignments, their knowledge stays accessible to the organisation through documented handovers, procedures, and lessons learned.