Allow time for the corporate evidence, not just the adjudication. Share registers, payroll reconstruction and an honest organisation chart often take longer to produce than the petition takes to prepare, and the qualifying year abroad must already be complete before the petition is filed.
The clock that matters started three years ago
Two calendars run at once. One is forward-looking and covers preparation, filing, adjudication and any request for evidence, and it can be estimated once the route and the processing option are chosen. The other looks backwards and cannot be influenced at all: the beneficiary must have completed one continuous year of qualifying employment with the group within the three years preceding the petition.
If that year is not there, no amount of urgency creates it, and the only remedies are to establish the year from a different period or to wait until it is complete. A four-month unpaid leave inside the window is exactly the sort of detail that turns a comfortable case into a marginal one, so it should be checked at the outset from payroll records. Then work forward: the receiving company should already be trading before the petition is filed, which means premises, insurance, a bank account and preferably a first contract, and none of those appear in a week.