European Mobilisation: The Fortnight Nobody Puts in the Programme

Every European data centre deployment we have been part of has the same shape. The technical scope is agreed quickly, the rate is agreed slightly less quickly, and then a fortnight disappears that nobody planned for. It is not the work. It is the paperwork that has to exist before the work is legal.

Here is what actually consumes those two weeks, in the order it usually bites.

The A1 certificate

An A1 certifies which country’s social security system a worker remains in while posted abroad. Without it, the host country can treat the operative as locally liable, and on a site with any compliance discipline he does not get through the gate.

Issuing authorities are not fast, and they are slower in August and around national holidays. The certificate is also per-person and per-posting: it is not a company credential you obtain once. If a crew of eight is mobilising, that is eight applications, and the crew moves at the speed of the slowest one.

The posting declaration

Most EU states require the posting to be declared before the worker starts — France through SIPSI, Germany through the customs authority, and so on, each with its own portal, its own required fields and its own idea of what constitutes a valid address for the host company.

The declaration is usually quick to file and slow to correct. A single wrong field can mean re-filing and re-waiting, which is why it wants doing carefully the first time rather than fast.

The local professional card

France requires a Carte BTP for construction work. Germany has SOKA-BAU registration for the construction sector. The UK and Ireland want ECS or CSCS depending on the trade. None of these transfer: a man carded in London is not carded in Lyon.

There is a detail here that saves programmes and is not widely known. In France, the CIBTP attestation provisoire is not a placeholder while you wait for the plastic card — under the relevant provisions it stands in place of the card. A crew holding valid attestations is a compliant crew. We have taken a full team through that route from a standing start, and it is the difference between working and waiting.

The permit condition nobody reads

This is the one that causes the worst surprises, because it looks like it has been handled.

A residence permit is not automatically a work permit, and the mentions printed on it define what the holder may lawfully do. Some permit an employed role only. Some permit self-employment or founding a business. Two permits that scan identically can carry entirely different rights, and the difference decides whether the man you are proposing can legally do the job on offer.

A supplier who collects documents will tell you every operative has a permit. A supplier who reads them will tell you which ones cannot take this particular engagement — before you have built a programme around them.

Medicals, authorisations and the rest

• Medical fitness declarations, where the site requires them
• Electrical authorisation to the local standard — in France, the employer issues the titre d’habilitation on the strength of the trainer’s assessment, which trips up suppliers who assume the certificate alone is enough
• Working at height, PASMA or IPAF where the scope calls for it
• Site-specific inductions, which cannot start until everything above exists

What actually removes the fortnight

Not speed. Sequence.

The fortnight disappears when the compliance work starts on the day the rate is agreed rather than the day the purchase order lands, and when the operatives being proposed already hold most of what the country requires because somebody has kept it current rather than checking it once at onboarding.

That is the whole of it. It is unglamorous, it is entirely administrative, and it is the difference between a crew producing on Monday and a crew sitting in a hotel while somebody chases an email.

If you have a European requirement and want to know honestly what the lead time looks like for that country, send the site, the trade and the dates to gotodataworks3@gmail.com or call +44 7934 524074. You will get the real answer the same working day, including the inconvenient version when that is the true one.