Completion was eighteen months ago. The job is still 'live'.
Look at the practice's job list and you will find projects that finished long ago but were never closed. The final drawings are somewhere in a working folder, mixed with superseded versions and sketches. A last invoice for the practical completion inspection was never raised. The health and safety file information the principal designer asked for went by email, and nobody saved what was sent. The job number still accepts timesheets.
When a question comes back years later, from a new owner, an insurer or a developer wanting a warranty, finding the final information is an archaeological dig.
Why projects never close
- The end of a project is gradual, with no moment that says 'close out now'.
- Close-out tasks belong to different people: engineers, accounts, the document controller.
- The team is already busy on new work, which always feels more urgent.
- There is no standard list of what 'closed' means in the practice.
- Archiving means sorting working folders by hand, which nobody wants to do.
Timesheets play a part too. As long as the job number is open, people keep booking the odd hour to it, answering a late query or looking something up, and the project never looks finished in the reports. Nobody wants to close it in case more work turns up.
What unclosed projects cost
| Loose end | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Final fees not invoiced | Revenue never collected |
| Open job numbers | Time booked to old jobs, reports distorted |
| Messy archive | Hard to answer later queries or support warranties |
| No project summary | Experience lost for future bids and pricing |
| Handover records not saved | Uncertainty about what was provided |
How we build project close-out
- When the final stage is marked complete, or a project has had no time booked for a set period, the close-out workflow starts and the project lead is notified.
- A checklist, built from your own procedure, lists the tasks and who owns each.
- The tool checks for unbilled milestones, unpaid invoices, open RFIs and unanswered submittals, and lists them.
- Final issued drawings, calcs and reports are gathered from the register into an archive structure, and working files are separated.
- Handover information sent to the principal designer or client is saved with the date and recipient.
- The project lead writes a short summary and lessons, prompted with the project's facts so it takes minutes.
- Once the checklist is complete, the job number is closed to new time and the project is marked archived.
The summary feeds your bid project sheets and the archive search, so close-out pays for itself in the next bid.
We usually run the close-out workflow on a handful of recently finished projects first, with the project leads, to test that the checklist matches how your practice works. It is also a good way to recover a few final invoices that were never raised.
After close-out becomes routine
Finished projects actually finish. The job list shows what is really live. Final fees get invoiced. The archive holds final information in a predictable place.
When someone calls about a building your practice designed years ago, the answer is a quick search rather than a hunt.
Does your job list look like this?
- Old finished jobs still show as live.
- Final invoices are sometimes never raised.
- Archives mix final and working files.
- Nobody records a project summary at the end.
- Finding final information for a past job is slow.