Plan the whole programme against the five-year ceiling from the start, counting any L time already used, and identify in advance which phases could be performed by someone else.
Five years is the programme's budget
Hypothetical example: Treat the ceiling as a fixed resource to be allocated rather than a distant limit. If a Selwyn firm expects a U.S. utility relationship to require proprietary commissioning support across several phases, the planning question is which phases genuinely need the specialist on site and which can be handled by trained local staff, remote support, or a second employee with the same internal knowledge.
Building that second person is itself a timed project, because the qualifying year abroad and the acquisition of internal knowledge both take real time. Where the role would change in character — moving from performing specialised work to directing a function and its staff — that is a different classification with a different ceiling and different evidence, and it should be assessed as a fresh question rather than filed as a continuation of the same story.