Financial close.

Champagne.

Photographs.

Congratulations.

A few speeches about partnership, collaboration and the exciting journey ahead.

This phase… and the consequent hangover… normally lasts a couple of weeks.

Then you wake up and realise that you have something the size of the Titanic to deliver.

And you may have been procrastinating… and drinking and eating too much.

You suddenly remember:

The document management plan must be submitted within 10 Business Days of Financial Close.

Fortunately, the intern does not drink… it’s abstemio… un gris… a grey guy with acne.

While everyone else was celebrating, he prepared a draft.

Great… he is sober.

You read it quickly.

“Not bad…” “Drinkable enough”.

Anyway, the important people are still in Fiji celebrating their bonuses… and there is nobody to ask opinions…

You tell the intern:

“Please send it.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do we send the letter?”

At that precise moment, your hangover disappears.

Completely.

The plan you are trying to submit is the plan that explains how documents must be submitted.

Including the correspondence protocol.

The naming convention.

The document numbering.

The metadata.

And the very expensive document management system everyone agreed to use.

And then… you remember about Houston and the small problem.

The system has not been properly configured… you don’t know if it even works.

Nobody has received training.

Half the users have not been activated.

And nobody has tested the submission workflow.

Sh*t.

That was supposed to be covered by the plan.

You start making calls.

The client:

“Not our problem.”

The document controller:

“I thought IT was doing it.”

IT:

“We haven’t received the final requirements.”

The lawyer:

“This should have been established before signature. Didn’t you complete the training?”

Not especially helpful.

Also, the reception in Fiji is terrible.

Now nobody knows how to send the bloody letter.

You hesitate over the filename.

Then you remember that the naming convention is inside the plan you cannot submit.

Metadata?

What the hell is metadata?

You call the client again:

“Email?”

“No thanks, not our problem”.

Sh*t.

This case is real.

Well…

Almost real.

Setting up the documentation and correspondence protocols is one of the first tasks on any serious PPP or major infrastructure project.

In fact, good practice is to complete it before Financial Close.

That means:

The system configured.

Users activated.

Permissions tested.

Templates agreed.

Naming conventions understood.

And yes… people trained.

Your first official letter should not be the test of your document management system.

Financial Close is not the moment mobilisation begins.

It is the moment you discover whether mobilisation actually happened.

For more practical lessons about what you need to do during a PPP, not only during the first 100 days, click below.

Save yourself from making a very expensive phone call to Fiji.

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