You know how it is when out-of-town visitors are coming — plan some activity, clean the house, fill the refrigerator.

So you can appreciate the level of preparation when the guests are senior managers of a Europe-based company who are investigating whether to invest $30 million in a new manufacturing plant and hire 100 persons.

That’s who came to the Kitsap Peninsula recently at the invitation of Congressman Jay Inslee, who met them last fall in Germany. Upon learning of their intent to establish a U.S. manufacturing facility and enter the U.S. market, he quickly invited them to consider his district for the expansion.

So the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance went to work to put the shine on Kitsap for our visitors. We wanted them to feel welcome, and we wanted them to return — just like friends and family.

Unfortunately we weren’t the first stop. We were the last.They had spent the previous week in California, and had toured other sites in Snohomish County before catching a Thursday afternoon ferry to Kingston.

They were tired by the time they arrived, so it was our job to make them completely exhausted. We had only 24 hours to begin building the business case for Kitsap before they would depart for Seattle, and a flight home the next day. Allowing them much time to rest wasn’t an option. With introductions and handshakes completed, they were handed thick briefing books and an itinerary that budgeted every minute of their time from ferry arrival on Thursday to ferry departure late day Friday.

After checking them into a hotel we whisked them away to a dinner with KEDA’s executive board, a scheduled hour-and-a-half event that turned into three hours-plus of enthusiastic conversation. Putting the company’s leadership together with their Kitsap peers in business and government demonstrated a unified attention to the company’s expansion, and set the stage for the next day’s itinerary of location tours, presentations and meetings from north to south. It also included a surprise visit by Congressman Inslee, who flew home from Washington, D.C., to welcome them and spend some time discussing the value of locating their manufacturing here.

They visited prospective sites that met their criteria on the Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation; in Poulsbo; in Bremerton; and at the Port of Bremerton. They learned about the Kitsap workforce that commutes by ferry daily to King and Snohomish counties, about the talent developed by the Navy and its contractors, about workforce recruitment and training resources.

They learned about utilities availability and pricing; permitting; construction timelines; prospective marketing and sales relationships; transportation; taxes; incentives; and local, regional and state initiatives supporting industries such as theirs.

Absent from their itinerary was the proverbial chamber of commerce day — the sun never showed itself; the wind blew; it was cold; and it rained. In fact it rained so hard for the last site visit of the day that we were all slopping through mud despite special preparations by a business park developer to set up an enclosed tent complete with meeting table, chairs, soft drinks and cookies.

They saw us at our worst, and our best. They departed exhausted and filled with information on the capabilities of the Kitsap Peninsula to accommodate their startup and operating needs. In the coming weeks we will learn whether they will continue due diligence on Kitsap County as a prospective location for their first U.S. facility. There will be many information exchanges in the interim.

Visits such as these are critical milestones in the business attraction process. During the 24 hours they were on our soil they spent about 17 of them meeting with more than three dozen people who could add value to the company’s due diligence. It takes substantial planning and many fingerprints to make business recruitment work.

As with this company, we will usually be competing with other areas in the U.S. and abroad for quality investments and jobs. Let’s keep the visits coming.

Executive Director Bill Stewart. He will cover issues surrounding the organization’s local economic development efforts, report on what progress is being made, and share the group’s successes.)