IT Services · Consulting

Strategy that ships.

Our consultants are practising engineers and architects — not career generalists with slide decks. We diagnose the real problem, prescribe a buildable plan, deliver alongside your team, and hand it back when it's working. Most engagements run 8 to 16 weeks. No retainer traps. No scope sprawl.

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// Engagement · cloud + AI modernisation
WK 7 / 14
Phase progress
Discovery100%
Architecture100%
Pilot build78%
Rollout24%
Handover
Latest decision
Adopt event-driven arch · Kafka + EKS · est. £180k/yr saving
14wk
Engagement
£2.4m
ROI projected
3
Workstreams
// anonymised · representative engagement
Where we engage · 01

Six engagement shapes.

The names matter less than the structure: clear scope, measurable outcomes, real engineering. Pick the one that matches what you're trying to do — we'll tell you honestly if it's not right.

How we work · 02

Discovery, decisions, delivery.

Every engagement runs through the same three-act structure. The work changes; the rhythm doesn't.

/01

Discovery sprint

Weeks 1-2. Stakeholder interviews across exec, engineering, ops. System review, code reading, observability audit. End with a written diagnosis you can show your board — and that we stand behind.

/02

Decision document

Weeks 3-4. Costed roadmap with phased deliverables, target architecture, risk register, and a decision log. Three options at each major fork — recommendation, alternatives, what we'd not do and why.

/03

Build alongside you

Weeks 5-N. We deliver in your codebase, your tools, your repo. Pair-programming, code review, architecture-decision records. Everything we ship can be maintained by your team — and we're doing knowledge transfer from day one.

/04

Hand back, then leave

Final 2 weeks. Documentation, runbooks, training. We help you hire if a permanent role is needed. The success metric is your team owning what we built — not us still being there in month 12.

What's different · 03

The principles that actually shape the work.

Anyone can write values on a careers page. These are the operating constraints we hold ourselves to in real engagements — visible in how we scope, price, and deliver.

Engineers, not generalists

The person scoping your engagement is the person who'd architect the solution. Average team experience is 8+ years in actual engineering roles — not in management consulting.

Time-boxed by design

Every engagement has a defined end date. We'd rather lose the next phase to your in-house team than create dependency. Average client tenure is 4.7 years — across multiple discrete engagements, not endless retainers.

Honest scoping

If we can't deliver something well, we say so — even if it costs us the work. We've turned down engagements where the timeline was unrealistic, the budget was wrong, or we genuinely weren't the right firm for the job.

Decisions over deliverables

The output that matters isn't a 60-page deck — it's the right decision, made faster, with full context. Our written work is short, structured, and stands up to legal/board scrutiny.

Vendor-neutral, by policy

No reseller relationships. No commission on cloud spend. No "preferred partners" we have to push. The recommendation is whatever's right for your workload.

Code is part of the deliverable

For most engagements we ship working code, not just architecture. Prototypes, vertical slices, full pilot builds — committed to your repo, reviewed by your team, owned by you from day one.

Sectors · 04

Where we've shipped most.

15+ years and 240+ engagements means real depth in some sectors and credible coverage in others. A few sanitised flagship pieces of work below.

Energy & utilities
£14k
avg saving per agent decision

Grid optimisation agent for a UK transmission operator — autonomously rebalances battery storage and spot-market trades against weather forecasts. Live across South East England network.

Banking & financial services
£8M+
annual fraud recovered

Real-time fraud detection sentinel for a tier-1 retail bank, processing 2.3M card events/day. False-positive rate down 71% versus the legacy rules engine it replaced.

Insurance
4 min
FNOL to settlement (motor)

Claims triage agent for a UK motor insurer — handles photo damage assessment, fraud scoring, and policy verification. 94% of clean claims now settle without human touch.

Public sector
G-Cloud
listed supplier

Listed on Crown Commercial Service G-Cloud framework. Recent work includes case-management modernisation for a department of central government and identity-platform diligence for an arm's-length body.

Healthcare & life sciences
DSPT
compliant delivery

Patient-data platform modernisation for a multi-site private healthcare group. NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit aligned. ISO 27001 evidence pack reused for procurement.

Retail, logistics & SaaS
99.99%
uptime delivered

Mid-market SaaS re-platforming, omnichannel retail backend rebuilds, real-time logistics visibility. Operating teams trained, runbooks delivered, paged-out within agreed SLAs.

A real engagement · 05

What 14 weeks actually looks like.

Anonymised case from 2025: mid-market UK insurance firm, legacy on-prem core platform, AI-led claims modernisation. Numbers are real; identifiers are not.

Sector Insurance
Duration 14 weeks
Team 5 from us, 9 from client
Investment £340k
Annual ROI £2.4m
WK 1-2
Discovery
14 stakeholder interviews · core-system architecture review · existing claims-handling time study (avg 3.2 days FNOL→settlement) · failure-mode analysis on 6 months of complaints data
WK 3-4
Decision document
Three-option roadmap: full re-platform / event-driven slice / AI agent overlay · recommendation: agent overlay first, re-platform Phase 2 · costed plan presented to exec + board
WK 5-9
Pilot build
Claims triage agent built end-to-end · photo damage assessment via vision model · fraud scoring · policy lookup · audit trail · MLOps pipeline · running in shadow mode against live claims by week 9
WK 10-12
Rollout
Phased traffic shift: 10% → 40% → 75% over three weeks · circuit-breaker on agreement decisions · daily review with claims operations · 94% straight-through rate on clean claims by week 12
WK 13-14
Hand back
Documentation, runbooks, on-call rotation · 12 hours of recorded engineering training · 2-month post-engagement advisory retainer signed (£8k/mo) · we left for the next engagement
Investment · 06

What it actually costs.

Most consultancies won't put numbers on a public page. We will. Engagement-scoped, outcome-aligned, and proportional to the value at stake.

Diagnostic
£25-50k
2-4 weeks
  • Discovery sprint and written diagnosis
  • Architecture or code-base review
  • Costed three-option roadmap
  • One round of board presentation

Best for: M&A diligence, pre-investment scrutiny, early-stage strategy.

Strategic engagement
£80-300k
8-16 weeks
  • Everything in Diagnostic, plus:
  • Pilot build or vertical slice
  • Embedded delivery with your team
  • Knowledge transfer and runbooks
  • Post-engagement advisory option

Best for: cloud migration, AI pilot to production, modernisation phase 1.

Most common
Programme
£300k-1.5M
6-18 months
  • Multi-workstream delivery
  • Phased rollout with milestone gates
  • Ongoing architecture governance
  • Hiring support for permanent team
  • Quarterly board / sponsor review

Best for: full platform modernisation, M&A integration, large-scale transformation.

Fractional CTO
£12-30k/mo
3-12 months
  • 2-4 days/week of senior leadership
  • Strategy, hiring, vendor management
  • Board and investor representation
  • Hands-on architecture review
  • Bridge to permanent CTO hire

Best for: early-stage scaleups, series A-C without a CTO yet, bridge between hires.

What we don't do: body-shop staff augmentation, percentage-of-spend cloud reselling, time-and-materials open-ended retainers without a defined outcome. If those are what you need, we'll happily refer you to firms that do them well.
Common questions · 07

Things people actually ask.

How quickly can you start?

+

For a Diagnostic engagement: usually 2-3 weeks from signed proposal. For Strategic engagements: typically 4-6 weeks because we want to assemble the right team rather than the available one. We'll always tell you the realistic start date upfront — and if we can't start in your timeframe we'll say so.

Do you do fixed-price or time-and-materials?

+

Both, situationally. Discovery, diagnostic, and well-scoped pilots: fixed-price. Programme delivery and modernisation work: capped time-and-materials with milestone gates and an explicit not-to-exceed. We don't do open-ended T&M without a defined outcome — that's a body-shop arrangement, not a consulting engagement.

Will you sign our MSA / SOW templates?

+

Usually, yes. We have our own MSA you're welcome to start from. We'll review your templates and flag anything genuinely unworkable (one-sided IP terms, unlimited liability, payment beyond 60 days). Most procurement teams find our paperwork lighter than expected.

Can you work with our existing partners and suppliers?

+

Yes — collaborative engagements with incumbent suppliers, system integrators, and managed-service providers are a meaningful share of our work. We're happy to take a defined scope alongside others rather than insisting on owning everything. Where there's overlap or friction, we'll flag it directly with you.

Do you have security and compliance evidence for procurement?

+

Full pack available under NDA: ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II, Cyber Essentials Plus, ICO registration, professional indemnity (£5M), public liability (£5M), cyber liability (£2M), DPA template, data residency commitments, and supplier-list disclosure. Most procurement teams clear us in under a week.

What happens after the engagement ends?

+

By design, your team owns what we built. We'll usually offer a 1-3 month advisory retainer for transition support — light-touch, defined hours, paged for specific issues. Beyond that we expect to leave. If a follow-on engagement makes sense we'll scope it as a fresh piece of work, not a renewal.

Are you SC-cleared for public sector work?

+

Several team members hold SC clearance. We're listed on G-Cloud and DOS frameworks. For sector-specific clearances (DV, NPPV, BPSS) we can usually source cleared specialists for the engagement — talk to us about scope and we'll tell you honestly whether we can support it.

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