There is a moment in every expert mobilisation process that is easy to underestimate: the step between selecting someone and the work actually starting. In most setups, that step involves manually communicating the selection decision, re-entering the expert's details into a contract template, and separately updating whatever system tracks programme delivery. The data moves by hand.
In ZeePMT, that step is called Finalise, and it does something specific: it takes a contracted application and creates the activity workload record that the selected expert will actually deliver against. The selection decision and the delivery record are the same object, not two separate entries.
How the process arrives at Finalise
A Call for Expertise (CfE) opens against a specific activity in an action plan. Experts apply through their portal, and each application carries the profile data they have already submitted to the system: qualifications, languages, fields of expertise, employment history.
Once the application window closes, the facility team reviews submissions. Applications that pass evaluation are marked Contracted — the shortlist. The shortlist is not a separate document or a note in a spreadsheet; it is a status on each application record, visible to the team with the appropriate permissions and traceable to the evaluator who assigned it.
What Finalise does
Finalising a CfE is a structural act: the system creates an activity workload record linked to the contracted expert, pre-populated with the activity scope from the action plan and the mission day parameters set when the call was created.
That workload record becomes the delivery unit. Working days and mission days are tracked against it. Expenditure is associated with it. The assignment is not a note attached to an application; it is a first-class operational record that carries the programme context, the expert, the scope and the timeline — connected back to the request and action plan that originated the work.
The accountability benefit is concrete: every delivery record can be traced to the call that produced it, the applications that were evaluated, and the decision that resulted in this expert doing this work. If a donor asks who authorised this assignment and what it cost, the answer is in the record, not in an email thread.
What happens to the other applications
Applications not marked Contracted are not deleted. They remain in the record — visible to authorised staff — as part of the shortlisting history. The evaluation notes, the scores if the facility uses them, and the outcome are all attached to the application record.
This matters for governance: a facility should be able to demonstrate that its selection processes are consistent and documented. The shortlisting history in ZeePMT is that demonstration. It is available at any point after the fact, without reconstruction.
The bottom line
The gap between "we have selected an expert" and "that expert has a workload record they can report against" is where a lot of facilities lose time and introduce error. Finalise closes that gap by making selection and assignment a single operation. The expert's data does not need to be re-entered, the activity scope does not need to be re-typed, and the accountability chain from request to delivery stays intact.