The case needs adequate evidence of a real qualifying assignment; whether a particular customer contract is necessary depends on the proposed work and other support. A vague future international expansion plan may not establish the duties.
Confirm the assignment’s factual basis
Identify the specific tasks requiring foreign operating knowledge and the business records supporting them. Describe conditional projects honestly, and assess offsite requirements if a client location is involved. Once the assignment and other eligibility facts are established, plan filing and admission steps.
A sales opportunity or overseas project completion date does not guarantee immigration readiness. Contracts and dated business records are what convert a planned assignment into a provable one, so the useful question is less when the customer signs than what exists on paper today. A statement of work, an internal project charter, a budget approval or a resourcing plan can each establish that the duties are real and that they require this employee’s knowledge.
Hypothetical example: an e-learning courseware developer waiting on a large institutional customer can still evidence the assignment through an internally approved platform migration plan naming the workstreams and the specialist role within them. Where the work will happen at a client’s premises, obtain the offsite arrangement in writing as well, since control and supervision at that location form a separate condition the project documents rarely address.