What is mobilisation?
Mobilisation is the period between winning a contract and delivering it — recruiting or transferring staff, arranging equipment and consumables, and setting up access and records.
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<img src="https://cleanoptix.co.uk/glossary/mobilisation/diagram.svg" alt="mobilisation — diagram from CleanOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://cleanoptix.co.uk/glossary/mobilisation">What is mobilisation?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://cleanoptix.co.uk">CleanOptix</a>
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</figure>The timetable is set by TUPE where staff transfer, because consultation and information exchange have their own deadlines that cannot be compressed to suit a start date.
Access is the practical thing that derails it. Keys, alarm codes, inductions and permits all take longer than expected and none of them can be arranged after the first shift.
The first two weeks set the client's view of the contract, and a mobilisation that goes badly is remembered for the rest of the term.
In practice
A contract starting on a Monday with keys arriving Tuesday.
The team is recruited, the equipment is ordered and the first two shifts are worked by a supervisor with a borrowed fob and a bucket.
Mobilisation failures are almost never about staffing. They are about access, consumables and the small permissions that take longer than anybody allows for.
The client's view of the contract is substantially set in that first week.
What goes wrong in practice
- Start date agreed without reference to the TUPE timetable.
- Access arrangements left until the week of the start.
- Equipment ordered against a model that has not been finalised.