Context

The company described in this material delivers large construction projects, often under a consortium model - that is, not in the classic general contractor versus subcontractor arrangement, but as one of several equal partners jointly responsible for delivering the investment. In practice, this means that a single project involves people from different organisations and different company domains, not just from one corporate structure.

Some of the company's projects also have an international dimension - alongside European partners, organisations from outside the European Union take part as well.

Challenge

The consortium and international model creates a requirement that does not arise in simple relationships with a single subcontractor: users from different organisations, different countries and different legal systems for electronic signatures must work together smoothly within one workflow.

This led to two separate problems.

The first was legal and trust-related. An electronic signature used, for example, in Asia or the United States does not automatically correspond to a European qualified signature. For a European organisation, this makes it difficult to assess such a signature, validate it and clearly determine its legal status. The company wanted the person receiving a document in one EU country to be able to clearly verify that a document signed by a partner from another continent was properly signed - without having to take an unfamiliar local signature or seal on trust.

The second problem was operational. Standard identity verification in the process of issuing a qualified signature usually requires a video call with a consultant. With time differences of six or seven hours in either direction, finding a common time slot - within European working hours - proves difficult in practice and slows down the onboarding of foreign signatories.

Approach

One workflow for documents

Within its own Corporate plan, the company created user accounts for domains belonging to other organisations in the consortium - including a partner from outside Europe. The priority was to maintain a single, consistent workflow for the entire project, regardless of how many organisations were involved. Splitting it into several parallel signing processes, one per organisation, would have meant returning to the same problem that affects relationships with subcontractors - scattered documentation and loss of control over the standard.

European Qualified Signature for Non-EU Residents

To solve the legal problem, the company looked at solutions that would allow people outside Europe to obtain a European qualified signature as well, instead of relying on local signature standards that are difficult to assess. One of the options considered was a one-time qualified signature with selfie verification.

Selfie verification as a solution to the time zone issue

Verification via selfie combined with an identity document - most often a passport for people from outside Europe - does not require scheduling a call at a specific time. It can be carried out asynchronously, without aligning calendars across continents. This is what removes the time zone bottleneck which, in the classic video verification model, hindered the fast onboarding of signatories from Asia, the Americas or other regions far from European time.

Results

• A single, shared project workflow was maintained, despite the involvement of several independent organisations and a partner from outside the European Union.
  
  
• The foreign partner's signature can be clearly verified against the European qualified standard, without having to assess unfamiliar local signatures or seals.
  
  
• Shorter onboarding time for foreign signatories thanks to selfie verification, independent of time zone differences.
  
  
• A solution that is useful not only for subcontractors, but also for foreign board members and consortium partners working in other time zones.

Conclusion

"In an international project, the question is not only: has the document been signed? The real question is: will a person in another country later be able to clearly confirm who signed it and whether that signature is trustworthy according to a standard they know?"

~ anonymous account from a construction company carrying out consortium projects

The case shows that in multinational and consortium projects, electronic signature technology itself is only part of the problem. Equally important is designing the identity verification process so that it does not depend on fitting into a single time zone - and relies on a legal standard that every party will recognise as trustworthy without additional arrangements.