Choosing between the five engagements, answered in full.

Start from the decision you are facing rather than from the ladder. If the board has asked for an AI plan and you need a costed, defensible sequence, that is the audit. If you already know the workflow and need proof it can be done, the proof of concept. If pilots worked but nothing scales past the team that built them, the design team. If the capability has to be built and shipped inside your estate, the build team. And if several suppliers are building with nobody owning the whole programme, programme and delivery management. The method is published free, so if none of those describes you, you may not need an engagement at all.

No. The ladder is a picture of increasing commitment, not a mandatory sequence. Most clients start on one of the first two rungs, the £44,000 audit or a £20k–£55k proof of concept, because both are fixed price and end in a decision rather than a dependency. But each rung is sold on its own. Programme and delivery management sits deliberately outside the sequence and can be bought by itself, including for programmes other suppliers are building. Engage one rung, or all five as your transformation partner.

Yes, if you have already established where agents create value. The build team is the rung for boards that have appointed a Head of AI and need a delivery team under them now, and for businesses whose internal teams are at capacity but whose agenda is not. What we will not do is build on a guess. If nobody can yet say which workflows are worth attacking, four weeks and £44,000 of audit is far cheaper than finding that out inside a build running at £70,000 a month, and the audit itself ends in working prototypes against your data rather than a document, so it is not a delay you are paying for.

Because the two ways in are bounded and the delivery rungs are not. The audit at £44,000 and the proof of concept at £20k–£55k each end on a date with a fixed deliverable, so each is priced as one number agreed in writing before the work starts, and we carry the scope risk. The design team at £35k–£55k a month, the build team at £70k–£85k and programme and delivery management at £18k–£35k are monthly because the work continues rather than finishing. The delivery rungs commit in writing to a measurable amount of value every month and report against it, and all three monthly rungs are cancellable on thirty days' written notice either way.

Yes, and publishing the rate card is what makes that possible. Every engagement price derives from it at twenty billable days a month: partner £1,560 a day, senior practitioner £1,250, associate £950, excluding VAT. Three days a week of a senior programme lead with partner oversight lands at the bottom of the £18k–£35k programme management band, and a build team of three under partner oversight resolves to £70k–£85k a month. Fixed-price engagements carry a modest premium over the day-rate equivalent, because the scope risk transfers to us.

Three of the five do. The audit includes a build engineer because it ends in working prototypes, not only a document. The proof of concept is one or two engineers, and they are the whole team. The build team includes a forward-deployed engineer shipping inside your repositories. The other two deliberately do not. The design team designs what gets built rather than building it, and programme and delivery management governs whoever is building, including when that is nobody from Tenhaw. Every engineer on any of the three is at the published senior practitioner rate of £1,250 a day.

Not always, but the two are shaped to hand over. The design team is a pair who produce the target operating model and the technical architecture together, ending on a sequenced build plan you can execute with us, yourselves or a third party. The build team is three practitioners who build and ship inside your estate. If your pilots worked and nothing scales past the team that built them, design first, because separating the operating model from the architecture is why scaling stalls. If a credible design already exists, start the build team against it.

The two lowest-commitment ways to start are programme and delivery management at £18,000–£35,000 a month, bought on its own with no requirement that Tenhaw builds anything and cancellable on thirty days' notice either way, or an agentic proof of concept at £20,000–£55,000 fixed over two to four weeks. At the bottom of the band, £18,000 a month is roughly three days a week of a senior programme lead with partner oversight on top. Cheaper still is a thirty-minute call, which costs nothing and ends with a named rung, or an honest none of them.

One to three, all senior, with James Rooney accountable on every one. The audit is a senior operator and a build engineer alongside James, who leads every audit personally. The proof of concept is one or two engineers pairing with yours. The design team is a pair, an operating-model lead and an agentic architect. The build team is three practitioners under partner oversight, and it does not get bigger than that. A programme needing hundreds of people mobilised across many countries is a large firm's work, and we will tell you that rather than bid for it. Programme management is one senior lead, available fractionally from around three days a week.

No. We do not sell a managed service or 24/7 run-and-support after handover on any of the five engagements, and that is better known now than in week three of procurement. Every engagement is designed to end with your permanent team owning the thing, so if a support function has to exist around the system, that is your operations team or a different supplier, and we will help you specify what it needs to cover. Inference, platform and evaluation sit with you too, on your own contracts, at cost, with no Tenhaw margin on them.

Two of the five. On an Agentic Proof of Concept one or two of them are the whole team for two to four weeks, and on an Agentic Build Team one ships alongside the interim agentic lead and the adoption lead under partner oversight from James Rooney. A forward-deployed engineer builds inside your estate rather than advising on it from outside: your repositories, your tenancy, your real data, pair-programming with your own engineers so the method transfers while the work is live rather than at a handover workshop afterwards. They work at the published senior practitioner rate of £1,250 a day, and they arrive attached to an outcome rather than sold as capacity by the head.

You find out fast, and it costs weeks rather than a year. The two ways in are fixed price and end on a date, £44,000 over four weeks for the audit and £20,000 to £55,000 over two to four weeks for a proof of concept, with nothing rolling on afterwards. The three monthly engagements are cancellable on thirty days' written notice either way, the handover date is agreed rather than left open, and on payment you own all the deliverables, documentation and code regardless. Before any of it, thirty minutes on a call is where we name the engagement that fits, including when the honest answer is none of them.

Two to four weeks on a proof of concept, the fastest of the five, with one real workflow built in your environment and working by the end. The audit is close behind, with prototypes running against your real data inside your own tenancy by the end of week three and the board readout in week four. The monthly engagements report value instead of a first artefact. A build team embeds in month one and ships into production across months two to four, a design pair spends weeks one to three establishing current-state truth, and programme management's first four weeks establish what is genuinely in flight. On the delivery engagements, a month with no measurable value is reported as a failed month.

Yes, and the usual pairing is programme and delivery management over a delivery engagement. It sits deliberately outside the ladder, is bought on its own with no requirement that Tenhaw builds anything, and governs whoever is building, including a Tenhaw build team. Where we hold both the governance and a build role we say so explicitly to the board, and our own workstreams appear in the same table, to the same standard, as every other supplier's, including when we are the ones behind. Each engagement is priced and contracted separately, so ending one leaves the other untouched.

Usually one of the two that own adoption explicitly. A build team carries an adoption lead whose whole job is getting people to work the new way, measured rather than assumed, and it is the role most often cut from a business case and most often the reason the business case does not land. A design pair works earlier and higher up: roles defined by the decisions they own, decision rights, and the governance that exists before anything is deployed. If the constraint is delivery discipline across several suppliers, that is programme and delivery management. The audit reads where your workforce is ready and where culture and incentives will block you, with the specific unblocks.

It splits by the shape of the spend rather than the size of it. Tenhaw's two ways in are single fixed numbers agreed in writing before the work starts, £44,000 for the four-week AI Readiness Audit and £20,000 to £55,000 for a proof of concept over two to four weeks, with nothing rolling on afterwards, so each is one invoice against one delegated limit. The three monthly engagements, from £18,000 a month for programme and delivery management to £85,000 for a build team, are recurring commitments on 30 days' notice either way, so they go to whatever authority covers ongoing spend. Whether your own schedule treats a cancellable retainer as annual committed spend is what decides that.

Yes, and it is a step down rather than a renegotiation. All three Tenhaw monthly engagements run on 30 days' written notice either way, so an Agentic Build Team at £70,000 to £85,000 a month can end while Programme & Delivery Management at £18,000 to £35,000 picks up governance of whoever is still building, including your own engineers. Nothing has to be unpicked technically, because the work sits on your infrastructure, in your repositories, under your controls from the first day, and on payment you own all deliverables, documentation and code. The smaller engagement governs delivery rather than performing any of it, so building is the one thing it cannot pick up.

No, and the published rate card is the reason. Every Tenhaw engagement price derives from it at twenty billable days a month, excluding VAT, so a discount would mean quoting a rate that is not the published one or putting fewer senior days on the work than it needs, and there is no junior tier underneath to move the work down to. Buying something smaller or shorter is how you spend less, whether that is a proof of concept at £20,000 to £55,000 rather than a build team at £70,000 to £85,000 a month, or three days a week of a programme lead at the bottom of the £18,000 to £35,000 band. Which of those is safe to shrink depends on the workflow.

The same 30 days you hold, and where the work lives bounds it. Tenhaw's three monthly engagements are terminable by either party on 30 days' written notice under the published terms of business, while the two fixed-price ways in simply end on their agreed date. Everything is deployed on your infrastructure, in your repositories, under your controls, so nothing has to migrate off our estate, and on payment you own all deliverables, documentation and code. The delivery method the team runs is published free rather than held proprietary. What 30 days is worth to you turns on how far your own engineers have picked the work up, which is why that transfer is measured while the engagement runs.

Each Tenhaw engagement is a separate contract, so there is a new Statement of Work each time, written on the same published terms of business: 30 days' notice either way on the monthly engagements, liability capped per engagement, confidentiality and data protection handled separately, and ownership of all deliverables, documentation and code passing to you on payment. What changes between the £44,000 audit and a build team at £70,000 to £85,000 a month is the price, the term and the exit date. Whether your third-party risk review has to run again is set by your own supplier policy rather than by us, and on a build engagement it is usually what sets the start date.

It becomes the largest risk on the programme, and Tenhaw reports it as one rather than working around it quietly. Month one of a build team is spent embedding properly, with a real reporting line, real decision rights and real access, because a team without authority is an expensive advisory function, and that authority comes from the sponsor. If the seat empties, the workable options are a successor carrying the same decision rights, or ending on 30 days' written notice with everything built to that point yours on payment. Whether a new sponsor inherits the mandate or reopens it is settled above the engagement, and no contract term decides it in advance.

No. Tenhaw sets no minimum term on any of the three. The design pair, the build team and programme and delivery management all run on 30 days' written notice either way from the first month, and a build team's exit date and taper are agreed at kickoff. The published durations describe the work rather than lock you in, two to four months for a design pair and six to twelve for a build team. What differs is what a single month buys. A build team spends month one embedding and ships into production across months two to four, so which of the three you could sensibly stop after one month depends on how much of the work your own people already carry.