Start when the U.S. need is identified rather than when a start date is set. Gathering internal evidence and obtaining a considered supervisor comparison can take substantial time, and a request for additional evidence would extend the timeline further.
Sequence the internal work before the legal work
A sensible order is to collect the internal documents first, interview the supervisor second, and only then brief counsel, because a drafter who can see the actual evidence writes a stronger and shorter description than one working from a job title. Where the U.S. operation has a fixed date — a system changeover, a new line starting — count backwards from it and add margin for at least one round of corrections. Current processing times should be read from official published figures rather than assumed. It is also worth deciding in advance who inside the company owns this work, since transfers commonly stall because nobody was responsible for retrieving a document that only one department holds.
Sequence the work from evidence to narrative: preserve internal records, identify the knowledge claim, verify foreign employment, and only then set the petition timetable. This matters because staff departures and software migrations can erase the very proof needed to show specialized knowledge. L-1B generally depends on twelve continuous qualifying months abroad in the relevant three-year period and is capped at five years total. Hypothetical example: A satellite-antenna assembler plans to transfer its interference-analysis specialist before a product launch. The launch date is useful, but the deciding question is whether logs and training records can be collected before the personnel archive is migrated.