Questions a sponsor or BA asks us

A consequential change to a system your business already depends on: an ERP extension, EDI with your customers, a new warehouse or order flow, two sets of systems joined after a merger, or a bespoke system asked to do something new. If it is a small, well-understood change, we will say so and tell you whether you need us at all.

Not at Industrial™. Industrial™ does integration, automation and architecture, and its automation is rule-based. If a step needs a model to read, decide or write, that part is AI, and AI UVD, the applied-AI practice I founded, provides it under its own terms and prices: https://aiuvd.com/. We do use AI agents in how we deliver our own work, under my review; that is our method, not something we sell. See the next question.

I architect every engagement and I am in every design decision. Anything that touches your live systems, security or data boundaries is done by me, or by a trusted engineer I have worked with, named in the statement of work before they start. Drafting, research, coding and testing are done partly by AI agents I direct, under my review of every deliverable. They never touch your live systems or credentials. Details: /how-we-work/.

Because much of the work on a software project is drafting, building and testing, and in our model agents do much of that under my review. Fewer engineering hours go into each deliverable, and the senior time goes on the decisions that carry the risk. What you get from it is a price fixed before work starts and a shorter route to go-live. We do not claim the work costs less than another supplier: we have not measured that, and the price is for the outcome, not for the hours. How a retainer compares with employing someone of my seniority is a different question, and the arithmetic is on /engagements/.

Every engagement is a statement of work at a price fixed in writing before work starts. A solution pack is a fixed price, from £6,000. A design-authority retainer is a monthly fee, from £6,000 for 3–5 days. Delivery of the whole and hosted services are priced once the design exists. Prices exclude VAT. The basis and terms for each form are on /engagements/.

Usually, yes. That is the normal case, not the exception. We read the system as it runs, and use what it has: a scheduled export, a file drop, a database view. The trade-offs (for example, hourly rather than immediate) are written into the design so you choose them knowingly. If the honest answer is that the system has to be replaced, the options say so.

Yes. Your own suppliers stay under their contracts with you. I coordinate them against the plan, review what they deliver against the agreed design, and report on them. Our own subcontractors, if any, are inside our price and I remain responsible for their work. The statement of work keeps the two apart.

A sponsor who can decide, a BA or process owner as the day-to-day contact, the documents that exist however out of date, read access in writing to what the work needs, and short sessions with the people who run the system. Your people are asked for answers, not days.

On a solution pack, retainer or delivery of the whole, your business owns everything made specifically for you, on payment. Our pre-existing tools built into it are licensed to you, not transferred. On a hosted service you own your data and its outputs, and the platform stays ours; continuity cover is available. The options are on /engagements/#ip.

It is kept on our systems on AWS in London, goes only to AI services under a data processing agreement that do not train on it by default, and working material is deleted or returned within 30 days of the engagement ending. A data processing agreement is signed with the statement of work whenever we process personal data. Records of the work are kept six years.