Plan in months. Corporate documentation, acquisition closing, premises and petition preparation normally take longer than the adjudication, and a new-office approval lasts one year before an extension is assessed.
The filing is the short step at the end
A realistic sequence starts with the corporate work: confirming who employed the individual, documenting the ownership chain, and correcting any records that do not reflect reality. Then the acquisition itself has to close, since the American entity must exist and, ideally, be operating. Premises, licences and a bank account follow.
Only then can the petition be prepared, and preparation typically takes several weeks because the organizational charts and the position description are usually revised more than once. Adjudication time should be checked against current published figures rather than assumed. After approval, the family needs time for schooling and housing, and the spouse for employment documentation.
Four to six months from decision to arrival is a fair planning assumption for a group doing this for the first time.