The point where a project stops being a construction job and becomes an operating building: possession, and the associated information, formally transfers from the delivery team to the client or operator. In a BIM-driven project, handover is not just keys and a certificate - it is when the relevant parts of the PIM get filtered and delivered as the AIM, often packaged as COBie data, alongside warranties, manuals, and as-built records.

A handover that goes badly usually traces back to a poorly defined AIR at the start of the project - if nobody specified early on exactly what data the operator needed, there is no reliable way to assemble it under deadline pressure at the end.