You won the contract. Brazil is the hard part.
Your yard is abroad and your obligations are in Brazil. Local content is certified item by item and audited system by system, vendors are registered by product family, inspection follows the operator own requirements and the data book has to arrive in the client numbering.
Your Brazilian scope has no owner
Look at who is paid for what, and the exposure becomes obvious.
Procurement
Sits with the contractor, measured on cost and on award, not on whether the package lands on the yard need date.
Inspection
Contracted and paid by the manufacturer, with a scope bounded by the product families of the accreditation.
Local content
Audited by the operator, certified item by item and reported system by system, long after the purchase order was placed.
So the risk lands on you
The integrator carries schedule, documentation and compliance without anyone inside the chain being paid to defend them.
The thesis. Schedule is defended across the whole chain. Expediting from purchase order to acceptance, a purchasing schedule tied to the yard need date and every acceptance criterion agreed before fabrication starts.
Six workstreams on the Brazilian side
One company answering for all of them, under a single point of contact.
Specification and sourcing
Specifications and data sheets checked against what is manufacturable, qualifiable and available inside the schedule, with bottleneck items flagged before the enquiry goes out.
Vendor qualification
Registration by product family, technical dossier, audit preparation and certificate validity tracked across your whole vendor list.
Expediting
Cadence with the mill, raw material release and shop loading verified, and deviation flagged while recovery is still possible.
Inspection and testing
Inspection and test plans negotiated, hold and witness points defined, vendors prepared for the call and non-conformities closed out.
Documentation
Document matrix per item, revision control, technical queries run to closure and data books built to the operator numbering.
Preservation to start-up
Packing and preservation to the contract standard, receipt inspection against the plan, punch list closure and start-up assistance in the field.
Local content and modular scope
The two places where an international contractor loses the most margin in Brazil, and the two we treat as engineering rather than paperwork.
Local content
A calculation, not a box to tick.
It is certified item by item and audited system by system, so the boundary has to be designed before the purchase order rather than defended after the invoice.
- Item to macro-group matrix per package, with the items that move the index the most per unit of spend
- Nationalisation designed by stage, from local supply of parts and components to CKD assembly
- Inspection performed in Brazil, which removes the cost of sending inspectors to the mill
- Waiver instruction and surplus transfer prepared where the rules allow it
- Dossier assembled for the accredited certifier, not left for the vendor to improvise
Modular engineering
Modules travel. Obligations do not.
A module fabricated abroad still has to satisfy Brazilian content, registration, inspection and documentation before it is accepted here.
- Modular feasibility, module boundary, weight, dimension, transport route and lifting limits
- Interface engineering between process design, fabrication and installation, with responsibility fixed per document
- Technical requisition written so the shop can actually quote and build it
- Vendor qualification, inspection and shipping release for vessels, exchangers, columns, skids and pipe prefabrication
- Logistics of the oversized piece treated as schedule, not as the forwarder problem
The asset has to be born instrumented
Industry 4.0 automated and digitalised, and the decision still depended on whoever knows how to read the asset. Industry 5.0 puts people, sustainability and collaboration back at the centre, which for a designer means one concrete thing, namely that monitoring is a design decision and not a maintenance decision.
We settle asset criticality, monitoring architecture, hazardous area requirements and regulatory compliance while the package is still on the drawing board, so the equipment reaches the field with measuring points already specified and the operation starts inside a predictive regime. Artificial intelligence advises, the specialist decides. The full cycle is described in the integrated solution wheel.
Anyone holding Brazilian scope
Shipyards
Hull and topside integration abroad, with Brazilian content and documentation to satisfy.
Integrators
FPSO leasing and conversion contracts with local obligations attached.
EPC contractors
Onshore and offshore packages of pipe, valves, fittings, flanges, pumps and equipment.
Sub-suppliers
Manufacturers delivering into those projects without a structure in Brazil.
More than 25 years inside the industrial supply chain
Three completed market entries of international manufacturers into Brazil, direction of a valve maker Brazilian operation and of a CKD assembly centre, and a working knowledge of the operator qualification, inspection and documentation requirements from both sides of the transaction.
Frequently asked questions on Brazilian scope
Who normally owns the Brazilian scope in an international contract?
Usually nobody. Procurement sits with the contractor and is measured on cost, inspection is paid by the manufacturer and bounded by its accreditation, and local content is audited by the operator after the purchase order. The integrator ends up carrying schedule, documentation and compliance without anyone in the chain being paid to defend them.
Does a foreign contractor need a Brazilian entity to handle this?
Not necessarily. What the operator requires is a compliant Brazilian entity that answers for supply, warranty, documentation and technical assistance, and that position can be held by a qualified local representation instead of an own subsidiary, which avoids tying up capital and shortens the entry.
How does the engagement start?
With a fixed scope diagnostic on one critical package, over four to six weeks. What is delivered at the end is the baseline of schedule, qualification, documentation and local content, plus the strategy and the action plan approved with you, and not the execution of the supply, which is contracted afterwards, by workstream or as a whole.
A critical package diagnostic, fixed scope
Four to six weeks on the package you choose, at the end of which you hold the baseline of schedule, qualification, documentation and local content, plus the strategy and the action plan approved. What is delivered in that window is the decision on how to run it, and not the execution of the supply, which is contracted afterwards, by workstream or as a whole. It is the fastest way to find out what your Brazilian scope is really exposed to, before it becomes a claim.