The documents that don't exist

The most useful output was an ordering problem nobody had stated plainly before: several of these documents can only be produced once another is finished, so the total lead time is serial rather than parallel, and a project can be two years from bankable while every individual step looks quick.

This framing carried directly into the next session's question of who funds the sequence.

Having argued in Session 01 that preparation is the bottleneck, we spent this session being concrete about it. Which documents, specifically?

We worked through the pack an investment committee expects — a bankable feasibility study, secured offtake, environmental and social impact assessment, land title or long lease, and a financial model somebody independent has stress-tested — and asked, for each one, what it costs to produce, how long it takes, and who currently pays.

The pattern that emerged is that each document is individually affordable and collectively prohibitive, and that the party who benefits from them existing is rarely the party able to fund them.

• The document pack, item by item
• Realistic costs and lead times for each
• Which are genuinely required, and which are habit
• The sequencing trap: documents that depend on other documents
• Open discussion