It caps total time in the classification, so a two-year installation followed by open-ended extensions is not a plan. Time already spent in the United States in certain employment-based statuses can count toward the limit, and the group should establish the remaining balance before promising anyone a longer stay.
Count backwards from the ceiling before the assignment is scoped
The ceiling is shorter than the one that applies to managers and executives, and it is the constraint that most often forces a change of plan two years in. Before the petition is drafted the exporter should establish how much of the five years Oceane has already used, if any, and what the group intends after the installations are complete. If the honest answer is that it wants her permanently, the conversation to have now is with a licensed U.S.
immigration attorney about routes that do not expire, not about extending one that does. Sequencing within the assignment matters too. The customer installations should be scheduled so that the services agreements are signed before she arrives, because renegotiating supervision arrangements while she is already on a customer's floor is the situation the labour-for-hire restriction exists to catch.
Nothing should be committed to the customers on a timetable that assumes an approval date.