Adding a new Data Area tonight

We are adding a new data area to the production product line tonight. We are working with a very experienced consultant to do the work with us but I wanted to see if any of you had been through this and have any lessons learned you'd like to pass on.
Things to look out for? Pre-game preparations? Post-create procedures?

Backstory: HR wants to create a new data area and make a copy of Production so they can use it as a historical archive. Create it, copy the data, secure it and lock it from change.

Thanks, everybody!