Occupancy of the premises, the first hires, the point at which operational duties transfer, and the review before the initial one-year period ends. Qualifying employment abroad also has timing rules, generally one continuous year within the relevant preceding three-year period, reviewed case by case.
Set a review well before the year ends
Book the assessment of progress against the plan several months before the initial period expires, so there is time to act on what it finds rather than merely to report it. Tie the hiring dates to that review. Keep petition approval, visa issuance where applicable, admission and permission to begin work as separate entries, and avoid business commitments that assume the earliest of them.
Add one further date to that calendar: the point at which the business decides whether to continue, and the person who owns that decision. A review that only measures progress produces a report; a review with a decision attached produces a course of action. Set it far enough ahead of the initial period's end that both outcomes remain available, and say in advance what evidence will be looked at, so the intervening months are spent generating it rather than deciding retrospectively what would have been useful.
Hypothetical example: a cold-chain operator books the assessment five months before the initial period expires, names the four measures it will examine, and finds that simply publishing those four measures in advance changes what the operation prioritises over the intervening quarter.