European Mobilisation: The Fortnight Nobody Puts in the Programme

European data-centre deployments tend to follow the same pattern. The technical scope is agreed quickly, the rate a little less quickly, and then a fortnight goes that nobody planned for. The work is not the cause. The cause is the paperwork that has to exist before the work is legal.

This is where that time goes, in the order it usually appears.

The A1 certificate

An A1 certifies which country’s social security system a worker stays in while posted abroad. Without it, the host country can treat the worker as locally liable, and on a site with any compliance discipline they do 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 get once. If eight engineers are mobilising, that is eight applications, and the last one to clear sets the start date.

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 has its own portal, its own required fields and its own idea of a valid address for the host company.

The declaration is quick to file and slow to correct. One wrong field can mean filing again and waiting again, so it is worth doing carefully the first time.

The local site 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: an engineer carded in London is not carded in Lyon.

One detail in France saves programmes and is not widely known. The CIBTP attestation provisoire stands in place of the card under the relevant provisions, so it is more than a placeholder while the plastic card is made. Engineers holding valid attestations can work.

The permit conditions nobody reads

This one causes the worst surprises, because it looks as if it has been handled.

A residence permit is not automatically a work permit, and the conditions printed on it define what the holder may lawfully do. Some allow employed work only.

Some allow self-employment or setting up a business. Two permits that scan the same can carry different rights, and the difference decides whether the person you are proposing can legally do the job on offer.

A supplier who collects documents will tell you every engineer has a permit. A supplier who reads them will tell you which people cannot take this engagement, before you build 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 catches out suppliers who assume the training certificate 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 removes the fortnight

Sequence, more than speed.

The fortnight goes when the compliance work starts on the day the rate is agreed instead of the day the purchase order arrives, and when the engineers proposed already hold most of what the country requires, because someone has kept their documents current since they registered.

It is administrative work, and it decides whether the team is working on Monday or waiting in a hotel while someone chases an email.

If you have a European requirement and want the lead time for that country, send the site region, the roles and the dates to gotodataworks3@gmail.com or call +44 7934 524074. On active projects we reply the same working day, and the reply gives the date that country’s paperwork allows.