Allow time to obtain records showing how the function operates and who performs its underlying work. A title alone leaves those questions unanswered. Preparation may require input from several teams, but function management does not carry a separate promised processing schedule. Review the qualifying foreign-employment period alongside those records.
Build the schedule around evidence retrieval
Set milestones for locating historical records, confirming the organizational description with the people named in it, and completing counsel's review before any travel or resignation decision. Where documents sit with former colleagues or in archived systems, start there first, because that is where schedules slip. If the business needs the position filled by a date, say so early so counsel can advise on what is realistic.
One dependency deserves naming explicitly: the people whose accounts the file relies on. A colleague who can confirm the function's scope, a former manager who set the authority, a finance lead who can produce the approvals — each is a single point of failure with holidays, notice periods and departures of their own. Ask early whether any of them is leaving, and take that person's statement first if so.
Hypothetical example: a shipyard group's finance controller, the only person able to confirm the historic budget authority, resigns three weeks into the evidence phase, and the schedule survives solely because that statement had already been taken. Order the retrieval by who might disappear rather than by what is easiest to collect.