Read the general professional work overview
A project file should distinguish the commercial schedule, the proposed employment period and immigration steps. These dates can relate to one another without being interchangeable. Use a timeline to make the arrangement understandable and to expose assumptions that should be resolved before travel or a promised start.
Keep the different date sources visible
List the dates stated in the offer, project documents and employer letter, with the source beside each one. Identify whether a date is agreed, estimated or dependent on another event. Do not rewrite uncertain project milestones as fixed employment terms merely to make the timeline appear more definite.
Describe the work during each phase
Ask the employer to explain which professional duties occur at the beginning, middle and end of the assignment. If the project includes periods with different activities, retain that distinction for review. A project label does not itself establish that every task falls within the proposed TN profession.
Plan the response to a schedule change
Record who will notify the adviser if the start, scope or employment arrangement changes. A revised customer deadline may require reviewing immigration implications rather than simply updating a travel booking. Keep later revisions alongside the earlier file so the sequence of changes remains understandable and truthful.
Record which source each date came from
Project timelines are described in several places and the versions rarely agree. Build the timeline with a source column: the contract, the schedule, the internal plan, the assignment letter, the client's programme. Where two sources give different dates for the same milestone, show both rather than choosing. The purpose is not to resolve every discrepancy but to make the picture honest, and a timeline that shows where the sources differ is more useful than one that presents a single set of dates whose provenance nobody can reconstruct. It also identifies the documents that would need correcting if the differences turn out to matter.
Agree the response to a schedule change in advance
Project schedules move, and the time to decide what happens then is before it happens. Agree with the employer who is told when a change is contemplated rather than confirmed, who assesses whether it affects the immigration position, and who decides whether the individual continues in the meantime. Write it down in a sentence or two. The value is that it converts a common event into a defined process rather than a scramble, and it puts the obligation to raise the change on the person who will know about it first. It also gives the individual grounds to insist on a review at a point where doing so is uncontroversial.
Describe what the individual does in each phase
A timeline of project milestones says what the project does and not what the person does, and the second is what the case concerns. Against each phase, state the individual's own role: what they produce, who they work with, and whether their involvement is continuous or intermittent. Phases in which they have no role should be marked as such rather than left ambiguous, since a schedule showing the person present throughout a programme they are only engaged on for part of it overstates the assignment. This also makes the end date explicable, because it locates it at the end of something identifiable.
What else is on your mind?
Is a matching job title enough for TN?Can years of experience replace a degree for TN?Can my own U.S. company employ me under TN?Can my spouse work if I hold TN status?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.