Quick answer: Usually, but only if the research logic exists somewhere other than that person's memory. A new engineer should be able to reconstruct what was unknown, what hypothesis was being tested, what changed between trials and why the team reached its current conclusion. Where technically uncertain activities may fall within the R&DTI, contemporaneous records matter because the company remains responsible for demonstrating the research pathway even when the people conducting the work change.
The 2026–27 Federal Budget announced R&DTI reforms for income years starting on or after 1 July 2028. Until those changes take effect, the R&DTI continues to be administered under the current legislation.
Research knowledge should belong to the project, not one person
Technical projects often develop a person who knows everything.
They remember why one prototype was abandoned.
They know that a strange result in the third trial was caused by an instrument problem rather than the design.
They can explain why a parameter that looks arbitrary in the current model was changed six months earlier.
None of this may be obvious from the project folder.
While that person remains involved, the weakness can stay hidden.
Then they leave.
The company still has drawings, source code, spreadsheets, test reports and perhaps hundreds of messages. What it may no longer have is the reasoning that connects them.
That distinction matters in research.
Australian Government guidance states that R&D records should be created at the time the activity is conducted. Those records should show, among other things, what was done, how the work was performed, when it occurred and who carried it out. Examples of records that may support the experimental progression include experimental plans, records of trial runs, test reports, research agreements and records of evaluation. business.gov.au
A folder full of technical outputs is therefore not necessarily a complete research record.
The useful record explains the progression.
What did the team believe before the test?
What observation would support or weaken that view?
What actually happened?
What did the result change?
What did the team decide to test next?
If only one engineer can answer those questions, the project has a knowledge concentration problem.
The same issue exists whether or not the activities ultimately satisfy the R&DTI criteria. For ordinary engineering, poor continuity creates rework. For technically uncertain work, it can also make earlier experiments difficult to interpret.
A research handover needs more than files
A conventional project handover often focuses on status.
What has been completed?
What remains open?
Where are the files?
Who are the suppliers?
When is the next milestone?
A research handover needs another layer: why the project is where it is.
A new technical lead should be able to reconstruct several connected elements. This is a practical research-handover framework rather than a prescribed R&DTI record format.
The unresolved question.
What outcome was not known when the investigation began? If the question has changed, what is the current version?
The prior-knowledge boundary.
What existing literature, supplier knowledge, internal experience or expert advice was considered? What remained unresolved after that review?
The hypothesis and variables.
What mechanism did the team expect? Which parameter was deliberately changed? Which conditions needed to remain comparable?
The experiment history.
Which versions were actually tested? A filename such as prototype_final_v7 tells the next engineer very little unless the important technical changes between versions are visible.
The anomalies and failed paths.
Which results were unexpected? Which were later found to be invalid? Which approaches failed for technically informative reasons?
The interpretation.
A test report may show that performance decreased. The handover should also show whether the team concluded that the hypothesis was weakened, the test was inconclusive or another variable had become the more likely explanation.
The next decision.
What evidence is still missing? What would justify continuing, changing direction or stopping?
Current R&DTI guidance asks companies assessing a potential core activity to consider whether a competent professional could know or determine the outcome in advance from publicly available or reasonably accessible knowledge, information or experience. business.gov.au
This information does not need to live in a single enormous report.
In many projects, a concise hypothesis register, experiment log, version history and decision record will be more useful than retrospective narrative.
The important point is that the records can be followed by somebody who was not in the room.
After the departure, decide what evidence can still be trusted
A new engineer should not automatically continue with the next planned test.
The first task is to determine how much of the existing research pathway can still be reconstructed.
Some projects will transfer cleanly.
The experiment plan is clear. Configurations are versioned. Raw observations remain available. Important changes have reasons attached to them. The previous engineer's judgement is useful, but not necessary to understand what happened.
Other projects have gaps.
A spreadsheet may contain results without identifying which configuration generated them.
A prototype may have been modified physically without the drawing being updated.
An apparent outlier may have been excluded, but nobody documented why.
A software experiment may have used a dataset that has since changed.
In these situations, the correct response is not to invent the missing explanation.
It may be necessary to classify the earlier evidence more cautiously.
Some results may remain usable.
Some may be usable only as exploratory observations.
Others may need to be repeated before they support the next technical decision.
This is one reason contemporaneous records carry a different evidentiary weight from reconstruction after the fact. The ATO notes, in the context of supporting R&DTI claims, that companies need contemporaneous records and that documents created later will generally not be adequate on their own without records created while the activities were occurring. Australian Taxation Office
The principle is useful even outside a claim.
Reconstructing research from memory introduces hindsight.
Once a team knows which design ultimately worked, earlier uncertainty tends to look simpler than it really was.
A replacement engineer may unintentionally explain an old decision using knowledge the original team did not yet possess.
Preserving the original reasoning avoids that distortion.
There is also a practical go/no-go question.
If the evidence chain is too weak to establish why the current design exists, another development sprint may not be the best use of money. Re-establishing the baseline, repeating a critical comparison or rebuilding the decision record may create more value than immediately producing another version.
Conclusion
Research continuity is therefore not mainly an administrative problem. It is a test of whether the project has converted individual technical judgement into organisational knowledge.
A defensible research record should allow a new technical lead to understand not only what was tested, but why each experiment followed from the one before it and what the evidence currently supports.
If the research disappears when one person leaves, the company may have accumulated results without fully retaining what it learned.
Sources & Further Reading
Australian Government — Record keeping for the R&D Tax Incentive
Australian Government — Conducting core R&D activities for the R&D Tax Incentive
Australian Taxation Office — Helping you get R&D claims right
Australian Government — Get help from a research service provider
Talk to Ignition Research if a technically uncertain project depends heavily on one engineer, founder or specialist and the research question, experiment history or technical reasoning would be difficult for another person to reconstruct. As a Registered Research Service Provider, Ignition Research assists businesses with research question definition, experimental design, technical investigations and contemporaneous supporting records within its registered research fields.
RSP registration confirms that the provider has met the relevant registration requirements for its registered research fields. It does not constitute government endorsement of a project or guarantee R&DTI eligibility. business.gov.au
We do not determine R&DTI eligibility or provide tax advice. The R&D Tax Incentive is a self-assessment program, and companies remain responsible for assessing their activities, expenditure and circumstances and obtaining appropriate tax advice.
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