Someone gives notice. They've been doing purchasing alongside operations for four years. Everyone's first thought is the open jobs.
The open jobs are the easy part.
What actually leaves
Which supplier to call for what. Not the list — the judgement. Who's good with thin material, who'll take a rush without complaining, who says yes and then slips. None of that is written down anywhere.
The history behind the prices. Why supplier B gets the aluminium work even though they aren't cheapest. There was a reason. It was a good one. Nobody else knows it.
The relationships. Suppliers give better service to people they know. Your successor is a stranger to every one of them on day one, and gets treated accordingly for a while.
The open items nobody can see. RFQs sent from a personal inbox, verbal follow-ups, a supplier who promised a number by Friday on a phone call.
The handover that usually happens
Two weeks, mostly spent on the immediate: here are the open jobs, here's the spreadsheet, here's where the drawings live.
Then they're gone, and for three months the replacement rebuilds context by making mistakes — sending an RFQ to a supplier who stopped doing that work, missing a payment term, not knowing that two weeks from that shop means three.
That's normal, and mostly avoidable, but only if you start before the notice period.
What to capture, in priority order
Do these while nobody is leaving. They take an afternoon.
One line per supplier, in writing. What they're good at, what not to send them, typical lead time, real minimum order. Not a formal scorecard — a paragraph each that a stranger could read.
Two contacts per supplier, not one. Name, role, phone. The second name is what stops a departure at their end doing the same thing to you.
Whatever's open, somewhere shared. The highest-value change on this list: RFQs that live somewhere other than one inbox. That alone turns a handover from archaeology into a list.
Why the current suppliers are the current suppliers. One line each. "Took over from X after the 2025 quality issue" is exactly the sort of thing that stops someone helpfully re-adding a supplier you dropped for a reason.
The structural fix
Handover pain is a symptom. The cause is that purchasing runs out of an individual's memory and email — true at almost every shop this size, not because anyone chose it, but because it never stopped working long enough to change.
The test is simple: if that person didn't come in tomorrow, what could nobody else answer?
At most shops the honest list is long — what's outstanding, who's late, what we paid last time, who to call. Every item on it lives in one head.
Shortening that list is the same work as making purchasing survivable day to day. The reason to do it isn't the resignation you aren't expecting. It's the fortnight's holiday you already know about.
If you're already mid-notice
Ration the time. Ask for two things:
A walk through every open RFQ and quote, recorded — screen share, phone recording, anything. Fifteen minutes of "this one's waiting on X, that supplier always needs chasing" is worth more than any document they'll write.
The supplier notes above, in their own words, however rough. Rough and honest beats polished and generic, and they know that better than anyone.