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We deliver the project

Scoped by a partner. Delivered by the same partner.

Advisory engagements owned end to end or our consultants embedded alongside your team. There is no model here in which you meet a senior team at the pitch and a junior team on the Monday.

Scope an engagement How we work

What you get

A named partner, from scoping to handover
A written scope with deliverables and a fee
Findings raised as we go, not saved for the report
Training and handover built into the engagement

Why this model Outsourced or co-sourced What you receive How it runs Training Selected work Questions

Why this model

The pyramid is the problem.

Large firms are structured as a pyramid because that is how the economics work. Senior people win the work; junior people deliver it; the margin sits in the gap. It is a legitimate business model and it is very good at scale.

It is less good at judgement. The moments that determine whether an engagement is worth anything (deciding what is material, knowing when a control is theatre, recognising that the real issue is not the one you were asked to look at) are judgement calls and judgement does not delegate well.

We built the firm the other way round. The partner who scopes the work delivers the work. There are fewer of us and we take fewer engagements, but you get the person you met and the thinking you were sold.

It also means we can say no. If an engagement needs depth we do not hold, we will tell you rather than staffing it and learning on your time.

Two delivery modes

We own it or we sit inside it.

The difference is who carries the delivery risk and whose methodology the work runs on.

Outsourced

A defined scope, a named team and an agreed outcome. We carry the delivery risk and hand you a finished deliverable.

Use it when

You need something done properly once: an ECCTA programme, a GHG baseline, an ESOS submission, a governance review or a full internal audit outsource where there is no function to embed into.

You provide

Access, data and a sponsor. We provide everything else, including the methodology.

You get

A deliverable you can take to an audit committee, a regulator or an assurer, plus the working papers behind it.

Co-sourced & embedded

Our consultants inside your function, on your methodology, reporting to your leads. The function stays yours.

Use it when

You have a capable team that is short on capacity or one specialism: an audit plan that needs IT coverage, a sustainability team facing its first assured reporting cycle.

You provide

The methodology, the plan and the reporting line. We work to your standards, not ours.

You get

Additional senior capacity without a permanent hire and a team that knows more at the end than at the start.

Not sure which

Three questions that usually settle it.

Does this recur? A recurring obligation belongs inside your function eventually. Co-source and transfer. A one-off belongs outside it: outsource.
Does it need independence? If the output has to be independent of the people who built the thing, it cannot be co-sourced into that same team.
Is the gap capacity or capability? Capacity gaps co-source well. Capability gaps usually need someone to own the work and teach it on the way through.

Talk it through

What you receive

Deliverables, not decks.

What an engagement actually leaves behind. The exact list is agreed in the scope before we start, so there is no debate about it at the end.

The output

The deliverable itself

The report, framework, footprint, submission or opinion the engagement was for, written for the audience it is going to, not for us.

The evidence

Working papers

The documentation behind every conclusion: what we tested, what we saw and what we concluded. Yours to keep and structured so an assurer or reviewer can follow it.

The actions

Findings with owners and dates

Management actions your team has agreed to, rated by real materiality rather than a house style that grades everything amber.

The governance

Committee and board papers

A version written for the audit committee or board: short, decision-oriented and honest about what is unresolved.

The repeatability

Methodology and templates

The method, the templates and the calculation files, handed over so next year's cycle does not start from nothing.

The capability

Training and handover

A working session with your team on how the work was done and why. Included in the engagement, not priced as a separate workstream.

How it runs

Six stages, no surprises.

Scoping conversation

A partner, not a salesperson. We establish what is actually being asked for, what the deadline is driven by and whether this is a project at all. No charge for this stage.

Written scope and fee

Named people, a deliverable list, a timeline, assumptions and what sits outside scope. A fixed fee wherever the work can be fixed and a clear basis where it cannot.

Mobilisation

Access, data requests and stakeholder mapping in week one. We tell you early exactly what we need from you, because that is the thing that slips on every engagement that slips.

Delivery

Fieldwork by the partner who scoped it. Issues raised as they emerge, in a short weekly note. Nothing material should first appear in the draft report.

Reporting and challenge

Draft, discussion, management response, final. We will change a conclusion when we are shown we are wrong and hold it when we are not.

Handover and follow-up

Methodology, templates and a training session. A check-in at an agreed point afterwards on whether the actions actually landed, which is where most reports quietly die.

Training

We would rather you did not need us next year.

Every partner here built a career before building this firm and the thing that distinguishes the four of us is a wish to pass that on rather than hold it.

So training sits inside every advisory engagement rather than alongside it as an upsell. At handover your team gets the method, the templates and the reasoning, including the judgement calls and why we made them the way we did.

We also deliver training as an engagement in its own right. Recent examples include enterprise-wide sustainability and sustainable finance training for a bank's finance function, covering reporting frameworks, GHG and climate, social and governance and how to audit sustainability data.

Audit committee briefings Reporting framework training GHG & climate fundamentals Auditing ESG data ECCTA awareness Risk & controls for non-specialists

Discuss a training programme

Selected work

Engagements we have delivered.

Internal Audit & GRC · Full programme

ECCTA compliance programme

A two-phase programme for a financial services group: Companies House and identity verification readiness, then the failure to prevent fraud defence built and independently assured.

2 phases

Companies House, then fraud

6 stages

Gap analysis to board reporting

Read the case study

Sustainability · Embedded

Specialist asset manager

Embedded consultant within the Sustainable Investment team, covering climate strategy, nature strategy and an investment framework review.

Embedded

Inside the investment team

Climate + Nature

Strategy delivered

Read the case study

Sustainability · Training

Regional bank, GCC

Sustainability and sustainable finance training for the finance function, covering reporting frameworks, GHG and climate, social and governance and how to audit sustainability data.

Finance fn.

Enterprise-wide training

Audit-ready

Data assurance module

Read the case study

All case studies

Questions

Commercial and practical.

Fixed fee wherever the scope can be fixed, which is most of the time. Where genuine unknowns exist (the state of the data, the number of entities in scope), we phase it: a short fixed-fee diagnostic first, then a fixed fee for the main work once we both know what we are dealing with. We do not open-endedly bill by the hour against a vague brief.

We raise it at the point we notice, in writing, with the fee and timeline impact. Scope creep discovered at the invoice stage is a failure of communication, not a commercial event.

Yes. That is what co-sourcing means. We work to your audit manual, your templates, your rating scale and your reporting line. Where we think your methodology has a gap we will say so, but we will not quietly substitute our own.

Small ones, regularly. A two-week diagnostic, a single specialist review, a board briefing. We would rather do a small piece well and be asked back than talk you into a programme you did not need.

It depends what we have done before. We cannot provide independent assurance over work we prepared. If we built your carbon footprint, we cannot then assure it. We can provide assurance over work prepared by others and we set out any independence constraint in writing at scoping rather than leaving you to spot it.

We bring in named specialists where the subject matter demands it, an accredited ESOS Lead Assessor, for example. They are named in the scope before you sign it and the partner remains accountable for the engagement. What we do not do is win work with partners and staff it with people you have never met.

Start with the scoping conversation.

It is with a partner, it is not a pitch and there is no charge for it.

Internal Audit & GRC

Audit plans, ECCTA, controls, governance reviews, EQA and assurance over sustainability data.

Explore the practice

Sustainability

Reporting and disclosure, climate and carbon, nature, ESG data governance and assurance readiness.

Explore the practice