Several municipal archives, one timetable that cannot slip.

On a funded contract the reporting deadline overrides every other consideration: work carried out impeccably but delivered late exposes the institution to withdrawal of the grant, and the loss cannot be recovered.

Planning was therefore built backwards from the reporting deadlines, dividing each archive into lots with verifiable interim milestones that allowed partial claims to be submitted.

Institutions were handled in parallel rather than in sequence, with dedicated teams and progress visible to each administration for its own portion.

Acceptance documentation was prepared lot by lot rather than at the end of the contract, so that the material needed for reporting was available at any time without waiting for the whole intervention to finish.

The archives concerned are largely current or recently deposited: the documents are requested daily by departments and by citizens. Withdrawing the files for the duration of the work was not viable.

Work was therefore carried out on the institutions’ premises, with an urgent recall procedure for any unit requested at the counter while under treatment.