Knowledge retention - bridging knowledge

I was recently contracted to provide continuity of management for a soon to retire manager. My roles will be to complete one short-term project and provide interim management of another long term project. In essence, I’m providing a bridge of knowledge from the retiring employee to the new employee.

From a knowledge retention perspective my tasks are:

1) Learn all I can from the retiring employee,
2) Capture/ document key and salient items, and
3) Share/ transfer to the eventual long-term employee (hopefully hired soon).

At the first meeting, my first challenge became clear – identify “who” -- who are the contractors, stakeholders and end users. This includes contact information as well as insights on roles and expectations. Another task will be to identify documents and other resources and where they can be found.

While this position is important just to keep things running, this knowledge bridging will enable the new employee to get up to speed more rapidly