Five best practices for document management

Numbering conventions, transmittal discipline and the small habits that decide whether a project record helps you or hinders you two years later.

1. Agree the numbering convention before the first document

Retrofitting a convention across ten thousand existing records is not realistic. Agree it in the first week, document it, and make it survive personnel changes.

2. Record distribution, not just issue

Who received a document and when is the fact most often disputed and least often captured. Transmittals should be a record, not a covering note.

3. Never overwrite a revision

Superseded documents answer the question of what was in force on a given date. Deleting them destroys the only evidence that matters when work built to an old revision is questioned.

4. Bring email onto the record

The most consequential correspondence on most projects is informal. If it lives in a personal inbox it leaves with that person.

5. Make retrieval the test

Measure your document control by how quickly a new starter can find the current revision, its transmittal and its comments. Under a minute is achievable. Anything longer indicates the register depends on memory.