What a handover has to carry
Five things. If the next shift gets nothing else, they need these.
- State of the area. What's running, what's stopped, what's in the middle of being done.
- Open items. Work started and not finished, with where it stands.
- Equipment out of service. What's locked out, tagged, down or on a work order, and why.
- Safety events. Injuries, near misses, spills, alarms and anything that changed a hazard.
- What the next shift must do first. The one or two things that can't wait.
Do it in the same order every time
A fixed order means nothing gets skipped when the shift is loud, late or short. Both people know what comes next.
- 1
Start with safety
Injuries, near misses, spills, alarms, and any permit, lockout or hazard that changed. Say it first so it doesn't get buried.
- 2
Walk the area together
Where it fits, go and look. At a plant, the line. On a pad, the equipment. On a ramp or in a yard, the stands, the tugs and the parked gear. Point at the thing.
- 3
Cover equipment out of service
What's down, what's locked out, who holds the lock, what's the work order.
- 4
Cover open items
Each one: what it is, where it stands, what's left, who started it, who finishes it.
- 5
Say what the next shift does first
One or two items. Be direct. "Check the chiller before you start the line."
- 6
Take questions, then sign
The incoming person asks anything unclear. Then both sign.
Face to face plus written
Talk and write. Each one covers what the other misses.
Talking catches the things that don't fit a form: how a machine sounded, a smell, a feeling that something's off. Writing keeps it. It survives the person going home, getting sick or being on days off when the question comes up.
- Do the talk with both people in the same place. A voicemail or a text isn't a handover.
- Write it before the talk or during. Don't write it from memory the next morning.
- Keep the written part short enough to read in a few minutes.
- Plan time for it. A handover squeezed into the last minute gets skipped.
- If the incoming person is late, the outgoing person doesn't leave without handing over to someone.
Who signs and acknowledges
Two signatures. The outgoing person signs that they passed it on. The incoming person signs that they received it and had the chance to ask.
The incoming signature is the one that counts. If only the outgoing person signs, the log shows what was said. It doesn't show what was heard.
- Sign by name, with date and time.
- The incoming person can add a note if something was unclear.
- A supervisor reviews the log, not just files it.
- If a safety event is on the log, the supervisor knows before the end of the shift.
Turn open items into tasks
An open item written in a notebook gets lost. An open item with an owner and a due time gets done.
- Give every open item one named owner on the next shift.
- Put a due time on it. "Before startup" is a time.
- Close it in the log when it's done, with who and when.
- If it carries over to a third shift, write why.
- Items that keep carrying over need a decision from a supervisor.
- Link the item to the work order or the permit it belongs to.
Common failures
- Writing "no issues" when there were issues.
- A log nobody reads, so nobody writes anything useful in it.
- The outgoing person leaves before the incoming person arrives.
- Equipment lockouts that aren't mentioned.
- Handing over only what's wrong and nothing about what's running.
- Open items with no owner.
- Copying yesterday's entry and changing the date.
- Passing the handover to a person who wasn't on the shift.