Engagement structure
How we work
last reviewed ·
applies to · all four services
The engagement structure, and how it is scoped and quoted, in public — so you never have to fill in a form to find out how this works.
The engagement, in four stages
Every engagement follows the same shape, whichever of the four services it starts in. The names change less than you would expect.
A call. 30 minutes, with the engineer who would actually scope the work. You describe the estate and the deadline driving it, and we tell you honestly whether this is work we should be doing.
A fixed-scope assessment. Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed end date, agreed in writing before it starts. Access is read-only throughout — we inspect, we do not change configuration.
A costed plan you own. The assessment typically delivers the findings, a costed plan and a risk register, as a standalone document. If you take it to another firm to execute, it still works — a plan that only functions if we deliver it is a sales instrument, not a plan.
Delivery and handover. Work proceeds in scoped increments you approve as you go. When it is done, you get documentation, infrastructure defined as code in your repository, a runbook, and a working session with the people who now own it — not a PDF and an invoice.
What the assessment costs
We do not publish prices. Every engagement is scoped and quoted individually, with you, before any work starts.
The scope, the price and the end date are agreed in writing before the assessment starts, and it never becomes a running hourly bill.
What you sign
Two documents, not one.
A short engagement letter scopes and prices the assessment itself. Only if you decide to proceed does a second, separate statement of work price the delivery work — built from what the assessment actually found, not from an estimate made before anyone looked. Signing the first never commits you to the second, and you are free to take the assessment's findings to another firm to execute.
Standing agreements — a master services agreement, a data-processing addendum, insurance certificates — are covered on the trust page, including what is not yet confirmed there.
Who is on the call, and what happens after it
the call · 30 minutes
An engineer takes the call — specifically, the person who would actually scope the work if you proceed. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you on that call rather than after a proposal.
If the call progresses, you get a written one-page recap within 2 business days of it; if it does not, a one-line honest no. Business days are Monday–Friday, US Pacific time, excluding US federal holidays.
Who we are the wrong fit for
We would rather say this here than let you find it out three weeks into a discovery phase.
Built for
- Companies with 15 to 500 employees, headquartered and operating in the United States, where operations run across several systems.
- A real deadline driving the decision — a support date passing, a contract or lease expiring, an audit or vendor-risk finding, an acquisition, or a peak season you cannot risk.
- A buyer who wants the plan, the risk register and the cost in writing before committing to either us or the project.
Not a fit
- You need a regulatory audit, an attestation, or a signed compliance opinion. We build and document environments that stand up to those reviews; we do not issue the opinion.
- You run a national or global estate measured in thousands of servers. A systems integrator built for that scale is the right shape of firm.
- You need a model that makes or materially influences a regulated credit, lending, insurance-pricing or employment decision. That needs a specialist model-risk practice, not us.
- You want a decision or a cutover by Friday with no assessment. That is how a cloud bill nobody can explain gets created.
- Your only driver is "the board wants a cloud strategy" with no operational problem underneath it. The assessment will probably tell you to stay where you are, and we will still charge for it.
How we hand over
Handover is not a PDF and a final invoice.
You get documentation written for your team, infrastructure and pipeline configuration defined as code in your own repository, a runbook for the things that will actually happen, and a working session with the people who now own it. For migration and delivery work, we sit alongside your team for an agreed period after handover, typically the first month — watching cost and performance against the estimate, and closing out anything the real workload revealed.
After that, you either run it yourselves, or we agree a support arrangement. Both are normal outcomes. A client who cannot leave is not a reference, so we do not build toward making that the only option.
after handover · yours to run [PLACEHOLDER] whether a support offer exists
We will not imply a rota or a response time nobody is staffed to deliver, so the shape of that support arrangement is not described here until it is real.
Start with a call about what you are trying to fix.
Book an assessment call30 minutes · with the engineer who would scope the work
one-page recap within 2 business days of a call that progresses