Engineering assessment
Find out whether it can be built.
Ten business days, $7,500, and a written engineering assessment at the end. The price is fixed before anything starts, and the document is yours whether or not you continue with us.
- Duration
- 10 business days
- Fee
- $7,500, fixed
- Quoted in
- USD
- Deliverable
- Written engineering assessment
- Obligation
- None. The document is yours
01Why this exists
Nobody should hand a hard problem to a firm they have never worked with.
The usual way to start an engineering engagement asks you to commit to a project before anyone has established what the project is. The scope is a guess, the price follows the guess, and both change once the work begins.
An assessment inverts that. You buy a small, bounded piece of engineering judgment. At the end you know what the problem actually is, whether it can be solved, roughly what solving it costs, and whether we are the right team for it. If the answer to that last question is no, you have still got the first three, and they are useful to whoever does the work.
We would rather be paid to tell you a project should not be built than be paid to build it and find out.
02Deliverable
What the document contains.
Problem statement
The requirement written back to you in engineering terms, including the parts that turned out to be different from how they were described. This alone is often the useful part.
Technical approach
How we would build it, what it is built on, and which parts are ordinary engineering against which parts are genuinely difficult.
Feasibility judgment
Whether it can be done, at what confidence, and what would have to be true. If the answer is that it should not be built, the assessment says so.
Risks and unknowns
What could make this fail, what we could not determine in ten days, and what it would take to determine it.
Cost and duration range
What building it would cost and how long it would take, stated as a range with the assumptions behind it.
What to do instead
Where an existing product, a process change or doing nothing is the better answer, that is the recommendation.
Written by the engineers who did the work, not by a sales team.
03Schedule
How the ten business days run.
- Business days 1 to 2
We read everything you send and ask questions. Specifications, drawings, spreadsheets, screenshots of the process, or a description written in an email. There is no format requirement.
- Business days 3 to 6
Engineering investigation. Depending on the problem this means reading data, testing an approach, examining a protocol, benchmarking a method, or modeling the constraint.
- Business days 7 to 8
A working session with you to test the findings against how the operation actually runs, because the written version of a process and the real one differ.
- Business days 9 to 10
The assessment is written and delivered. One document, written by the engineers who did the work, in language you can hand to someone who holds the budget.
04Fee
10 business days. $7,500. Fixed.
One price, published, the same for everyone. The agreed fee does not change if our investigation takes longer than expected. Material changes to the agreed question or scope are treated as a new engagement.
Quoted in USD. We work worldwide and remotely by default. Where the problem genuinely requires someone on site, travel is scoped and agreed separately before it is booked.
If the assessment leads directly to a build engagement of $50,000 or more, signed within 60 days, $3,750 of the fee is credited against the first invoice. The assessment is a deliverable you bought, not a deposit, so the rest of it stands on its own.
05Fit
Whether this is for you.
Good fit
- A requirement existing products cannot satisfy adequately.
- Equipment or systems that will not talk to each other.
- Scheduling, routing, allocation or material problems your current tools cannot model.
- A technical thesis that has to be validated or killed before capital is committed.
- A project that has stalled and needs an independent read on why.
- Something that has to run offline, on your own hardware, or inside a plant with no cloud.
Not what we do
- Marketing websites, brochure sites and ordinary web presence work.
- General IT support, helpdesk and managed services.
- Staff augmentation, where you want engineers to direct rather than a problem solved.
- Work where the specification is already complete and you want the cheapest bid.
If you are not sure which column you are in, describe the problem and we will tell you plainly. Saying no quickly is more useful to both of us than a long conversation that ends the same way.
Describe the problem.
A few paragraphs is enough to start. No specification, no drawings and no formal scope required. We confirm whether the assessment fits your problem within one business day.
Already know exactly what you need built? Skip the assessment and send the requirement