Ready to Build

The status is a list, not a label

RTB describes a state in which nothing legal is still open. In practice a buyer works through four blocks, and each consists of documents:

Planning: a permit that can no longer be challenged, or a development plan in force, including the ancillary conditions and evidence that they can be met.

Grid: a binding confirmation from the network operator stating the connection point, the connection capacity, the date and the cost allocation including any construction cost contribution.

Site: secured control for the whole operating life, meaning purchase, a heritable building right or a lease with matching tenor, plus registered easements for access and the cable route.

Construction: a negotiated EPC contract, or at minimum a binding offer with a scope schedule, programme, warranties and security.

Why the definition is contested

RTB is not a protected term. Sellers and buyers regularly mean different things by it, and the dispute is almost always about the same points: an appeal period still running, a grid confirmation subject to reservation, a lease with a break right, or an EPC price with an open adjustment clause.

That is why sale agreements almost never rely on the phrase. They rely on a schedule: a list of the documents that must exist at completion. Anything missing from that list gets handled through conditions, retentions or a price reduction.

What the status is worth

Between a developed project and an RTB project lies no construction phase, only a risk phase. What the developer has cleared, the buyer no longer carries, and that difference is what gets paid for. An incomplete RTB status is therefore not worth slightly less; it is valued back at the stage before it.

Anyone bringing a project to sale or to financing is working towards this list, and the order is not arbitrary. Planning and grid are the two items with the longest lead time and the least room to influence them, so they belong at the start. Site control and the construction contract can follow.

At handover, how the documents are organised counts nearly as much as what they say. A review that takes a week because every document has to be hunted down reliably ends in more retentions than one that takes three days because the data room is complete.

Dates are their own question. A permit with an implementation deadline, a grid confirmation with a return date and an offer with a validity period together form a window. If it closes before construction starts, the status is lost even though the list is complete.