Engagements differ in depth but the sequence is remarkably stable. If a proposal you receive skips several of these, it is worth asking why — sometimes there is a good reason, and sometimes the stages have simply been priced out.
The twelve stages
- Scoping conversation. Your trigger, deadline, scale, footprint, existing data and appetite. Should happen before any number is quoted.
- Proposal and engagement terms. Deliverables, exclusions, assumptions about what you provide, number of review rounds, who does the work.
- Kick-off and boundary setting. Which entities, sites and activities are in. Consolidation approach. Base year. This governs everything downstream.
- Gap analysis. Current disclosures, policies, systems and data against the applicable framework, producing a prioritised work list.
- Stakeholder engagement. Interviews, surveys and workshops with the groups that affect or are affected by the business.
- Materiality assessment. Turning that input into a defensible set of topics, with a documented rationale and a management-approved outcome.
- Data collection. Templates issued, owners named, evidence gathered, gaps chased. The longest stage, every time.
- Calculation and analysis. Emissions inventory, intensity metrics, social and governance data, climate risk assessment and any financial quantification.
- Strategy and targets. What you will do about what you found, on what timeline, with what baseline.
- Drafting and internal review. Usually two or three rounds. Legal, investor relations and the board committee all have views.
- Translation, design and publication. Bilingual proofing, content index, filing where required.
- Post-publication. Rating platform submissions, CDP if relevant, a lessons file, and the improvement plan for next cycle.
Why the boundary decision comes first
Boundary sounds administrative. It is the most consequential decision in the project.
It determines which subsidiaries and joint ventures are consolidated, whether leased assets are in or out, whether that Dongguan facility appears in your emissions, and therefore what data you have to chase and what your numbers mean. Change it in month four and the inventory, the materiality outcome and the drafted text all move with it.
Ask for this in writing at kick-off
The entities included, the consolidation approach used and why, the base year, the treatment of leased premises, and how any later restatement will be handled. One page. It will save an argument in year three when somebody asks why the numbers moved.
Who has to be in the room
| Function | What only they can provide |
|---|---|
| Finance | Entity list, consolidation logic, utility and fuel spend, and the financial framing of climate risk |
| Facilities / operations | Meter data, landlord apportionments, fuel, refrigerants, waste contracts |
| Human resources | Headcount, turnover, training hours, injury data, diversity data |
| Procurement | Supplier lists, spend categories, supplier standards, upstream data |
| Company secretary / legal | Governance structure, board oversight, filing obligations |
| A sponsor at board or ExCo level | The authority to make everyone above respond within the week |
The last row is not optional. Engagements without a senior sponsor do not fail loudly; they just run three months late and cost more.
Where engagements stall
- Data requests sent to nobody in particular. Templates addressed to a department produce silence. Name a person per line item, with a date.
- The boundary reopens. Usually because someone senior only now realises a subsidiary is included. Settle it at kick-off, in writing.
- Review rounds multiply. Every additional reviewer adds a week and a set of comments that contradict the last set. Agree a review protocol and a comment deadline up front.
- Assurance booked too late. Assurance providers have seasons. Engage them during data collection, not after the draft is finished.
- The report becomes a marketing document. The moment the brief shifts from “what is true” to “what reads well”, the technical team stops being able to defend it.
What year two should look like
A good first engagement is designed to make itself smaller. By the second cycle you should have a data collection calendar with named owners, a calculation file your own team can run, a materiality outcome that only needs testing rather than rebuilding, and a much shorter drafting round.
If a firm's second-year proposal is the same price for the same work, ask what was transferred to you in year one. That is a fair question and a revealing one.
Next
What this costs, how to prepare a useful quotation brief, and how to read two quotes that are far apart.