Request an itemized preparation scope based on the records actually missing: knowledge and training evidence, project descriptions, translations where necessary and the employer’s explanation of direct professional support. Confirm government charges separately.
Price the documentation effort, not just the paperwork
Identify which records the applicant or employer already holds before commissioning additional work. Ask whether the professional review fee includes resolving a disputed discipline match or reviewing a revised duty description. A technician label does not establish the price of preparation, and no quoted service fee can guarantee that the role qualifies.
Two further items belong in a realistic estimate. The first is the employer's internal effort, which is rarely invoiced and frequently decisive: engineering time spent describing the work in terms a non-specialist can follow, a manager's time confirming what a record shows, and the wait for an authorised signature in an organisation where that authority sits outside the hiring team. Budget those hours explicitly and protect them, because rushed technical descriptions written at the end of a working day are the single most common cause of a weak file.
The second is the cost of a second attempt if the discipline match turns out not to hold: the applicant is not simply back at the start, because the account already given forms part of the history. Hypothetical example: a photonics technologist's employer treats the technical narrative as a task for a spare afternoon, produces two generic paragraphs, and spends more on the rework than the original review had cost in total.