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How engagements are scoped, run and closed - and the commercial terms on which this practice contracts.
Method
The sequence is the same whether the mandate runs for six weeks or two years. Its purpose is to make the work auditable: at any point, both parties can see what was agreed, what has been delivered and what remains.
Every engagement starts with a written statement of work setting out the deliverables, the acceptance criteria and the commercial basis. Open-ended time-and-materials arrangements without a defined outcome are declined.
Before anything is designed, the requirement is pinned down: what the standard, the regulation or the business case actually demands, what judgement is involved, and what evidence will be needed to support the position later. Getting this wrong is expensive, because everything downstream inherits it.
A short, bounded diagnostic establishes what exists rather than what is believed to exist - asset data and its lineage, system capability, control coverage and the points where the current arrangement cannot evidence what it asserts.
Target design covers the whole chain, from the accounting or regulatory position down to the data model and platform that produces it. Design is taken through the governance forums, impact-assessed and formally agreed, so the decisions are owned by the organisation rather than by the consultant.
Acting as design authority through implementation: resolving the questions that only surface once something is being built, directing user acceptance testing, and signing off at go-live. Design work that stops at the slide pack is not delivery.
Engagements are built to end. Documented policy, methodology and data definitions, capability transfer, and a named internal owner for everything built are conditions of closedown, so the client is not left dependent on the consultant who designed it.
Commercial basis
These are the standing terms on which the practice trades. They are set out publicly so that prospective clients, agencies and their advisers can assess the basis of engagement before any contract is drafted.
The practice trades as an independent business supplying services to multiple clients. It is not, and does not hold itself out as, an employment or staffing intermediary.
Work is contracted against a written statement of work with specified deliverables and acceptance criteria. The practice is paid for the delivery of those outcomes, not for attendance.
Contracts provide for a suitably qualified substitute to be supplied at the practice's cost where the named consultant is unavailable, subject only to the client's reasonable security and vetting requirements.
The practice provides its own hardware, software, licences and delivery methodology. Client systems are used only where client data or security policy requires it.
The client specifies the outcome required. How that outcome is achieved - method, sequencing, working pattern and location - is determined by the practice.
The practice markets its services continuously and takes concurrent engagements where capacity allows. No client has an exclusive call on the practice's time and there is no obligation on either party to offer or accept further work at the end of an engagement.
Rectification of defective work is undertaken at the practice's own cost. The practice carries its own professional indemnity insurance, invoices on commercial terms, and bears the risk of non-payment.
The practice does not participate in client appraisal, benefits, bonus or training schemes, does not hold line management responsibility for client staff, and does not represent itself as an employee of the client.
The practice holds professional indemnity insurance of £1,000,000 through Qdos, arranged in the name of the contracting entity and renewed annually. The principal is a Chartered Accountant. Certificates are provided on request.
Engagement types
A bounded mandate on a specific accounting, regulatory or valuation question - methodology development, a policy or position paper, or a technical opinion taken through governance to sign-off.
Fixed price, defined deliverable.
Full target design and implementation of an operating model, data architecture or reporting solution, run to agreed milestones with the practice acting as design authority through to go-live.
Milestone-based statement of work.
Independent assessment of an existing arrangement - a valuation control framework, an operating model, a data solution - producing an evidenced baseline and a costed route forward.
Fixed-scope review.
Capability transfer, documentation and a named internal owner for each process are conditions of closedown - not optional extras.