Agent-Readiness Audit
Where agents add value, where they don't, and what to do first.
Large consultancies typically price an equivalent assessment at £150k–£500k. How the comparison works.
Fixed price, fixed deliverable
On a date, with a fixed-price deliverable: the board readout and the costed plan. Nothing rolls on.
Derived from the published rate card, so you can check the arithmetic.
A senior operator alongside James Rooney, who leads every audit personally, with specialist input where the frontier test needs it.
No standing build team: this is an assessment. James Rooney leads every audit personally at the published partner rate of £1,560 a day, and where the frontier test in weeks three to five needs an engineer, that person is an associate he has already delivered alongside, at the published senior rate of £1,250.
James Rooney provides partner oversight on every engagement, and leads the audits personally. The people on your engagement are not substituted without your written agreement. Access, data handling and screening are set out on our security page.
The Agent-Readiness Audit is a fixed-price, 6–8 week assessment that tells a leadership team exactly where AI agents will and will not create value in their organisation. Tenhaw operators embed with your teams, examine real workflows rather than survey responses, and hand the board a costed, outcome-driven plan in three-month increments, capped at twelve months. It costs between £30,000 and £90,000 depending on organisation size, and it is one of two ways most clients start. It is the engagement organisations reach for when a Copilot or Gemini rollout has stalled, when shadow AI has spread across the business with nobody holding an inventory, when several functions have each bought a point solution and nothing joins up, or when an acquisition or a board review needs AI due diligence.
Month one of our live specialty insurance engagement was an audit run this way, inside the estate rather than as a readout exercise, and it is written up in full. Read the month-one write-up→
What you get
In scope for the £30k–£90k fixed price.
- Heat-map of where agents add measurable value, ranked by return and feasibility
- Where agents are constrained: data quality, risk appetite, regulation
- Where your workforce is ready, and where it demonstrably is not
- Where culture and incentives will block adoption, and the specific unblocks
- A costed, outcome-driven plan in three-month increments, capped at twelve months
- An estimated run cost per candidate workflow, so the cost of operating the thing is known before it is committed to
- The investment case, written so your board can act on it
What the board readout contains
Seven sections, in this order. What each one says depends on what six weeks inside your organisation finds.
- 01
Heat map by workflow
Every candidate workflow examined, ranked by expected return against feasibility, with the evidence behind each placement named rather than scored out of five.
- 02
Constraint register
Where agents are blocked here: data quality and availability, risk appetite, regulatory position, and which constraints are permanent against which are a piece of work with a cost attached.
- 03
Decision inventory
Which decisions in the workflows examined could move to an agent, which must stay with a person, and the consequence and reversibility test behind each answer.
- 04
Workforce readiness read
Where your people are ready and where they demonstrably are not, by function, alongside where culture and incentives will block adoption and the specific unblocks.
- 05
Outcome-driven plan in three-month increments, costed, max twelve months
What to do first, second and third, with build cost and estimated run cost per workflow, dependencies, and the decision points where the plan should be re-tested.
- 06
The investment case
The value stated in currency with the assumptions exposed, the confidence attached to each figure, and the arithmetic laid out so your finance function can rework it with their own numbers.
- 07
The do-not-do list
What is not worth doing here and why, including where the recommendation is to stop. Clients tell us this is usually the most valuable page.
There are no sample findings on this page: a worked heat map with plausible rows in it would be an invented result for an organisation we have not audited.
How the engagement runs, week by week
6–8 weeks, drawn to scale so you can see how long each part actually takes.
- 01Weeks 1–2
Embed and observe. We sit with the teams doing the work, trace real workflows end to end, and pull the delivery data rather than relying on what the org chart claims happens. This is also where the inventory gets built: which AI tools are genuinely in use across the business, sanctioned or not, what each was bought to do, where two of them cover the same job, and which workflows have quietly come to depend on something nobody in the centre knows about.
- 02Weeks 3–5
Test the frontier. Two or three candidate workflows are prototyped against your real data, inside your own tenancy, rather than demonstrated on ours. Each one produces a measured accuracy and confidence read, an estimated run cost per unit of work so the ongoing cost is known before anything is committed, and working code you keep whether or not you continue with us. It is the part of the audit that grounds the week-eight sequencing in evidence. How many workflows are tested is agreed in writing before the engagement starts, and it is one of the things that moves the fixed price within the band.
- 03Weeks 6–7
Model the operating impact. Which roles change, which decisions move, what governance is required, and what the realistic adoption curve looks like.
- 04Week 8
Board readout. A sequenced, costed plan, presented to your leadership, with the assumptions and the risks set out.
- Weeks 1–2
Embed and observe. We sit with the teams doing the work, trace real workflows end to end, and pull the delivery data rather than relying on what the org chart claims happens. This is also where the inventory gets built: which AI tools are genuinely in use across the business, sanctioned or not, what each was bought to do, where two of them cover the same job, and which workflows have quietly come to depend on something nobody in the centre knows about.
- Weeks 3–5
Test the frontier. Two or three candidate workflows are prototyped against your real data, inside your own tenancy, rather than demonstrated on ours. Each one produces a measured accuracy and confidence read, an estimated run cost per unit of work so the ongoing cost is known before anything is committed, and working code you keep whether or not you continue with us. It is the part of the audit that grounds the week-eight sequencing in evidence. How many workflows are tested is agreed in writing before the engagement starts, and it is one of the things that moves the fixed price within the band.
- Weeks 6–7
Model the operating impact. Which roles change, which decisions move, what governance is required, and what the realistic adoption curve looks like.
- Week 8
Board readout. A sequenced, costed plan, presented to your leadership, with the assumptions and the risks set out.
Is this the right rung for you?
We would rather tell you now than three weeks in.
Right for you if
- Boards that have asked for an AI plan and received slideware
- Organisations whose Copilot or Gemini rollout has stalled, with no diagnosis of why
- Businesses where shadow AI has spread across functions and nobody holds an inventory
- Estates carrying tool and vendor sprawl: overlapping point solutions bought independently by different functions
- Executive teams with no shared view of their AI maturity, and a different answer from every function
- Anyone who needs AI due diligence before an acquisition, an investment or a board review
- Leadership teams who need a defensible investment case before committing budget
- Anyone quoted a seven-figure programme who wants to sanity-check the scope first
Not right if
- Teams looking for a tooling procurement exercise
- Organisations that have already completed a credible readiness assessment
- Anyone wanting a rubber stamp on a decision already taken
Prefer to talk it through? Ask us on a discovery call →
A costed, outcome-driven sequence in three-month increments, capped at twelve months. Not a maturity model.
£30k–£90k·6–8 weeks·Rung 01
- The three things worth doing first, with expected return and confidence
- The things not worth doing, and why, usually the most valuable page
- A clear-eyed view of what your organisation cannot yet safely automate
- A recommendation to stop, where that is what the evidence says, with the plan yours to keep either way
Agent-Readiness Audit: your questions
What is an agent-readiness audit?
An agent-readiness audit is a structured assessment of where AI agents can create measurable value in an organisation, where they are constrained by data, risk or regulation, and whether the workforce and culture are ready to adopt them. Tenhaw's version runs 6–8 weeks at a fixed price of £30,000–£90,000 and produces a sequenced, costed plan rather than a maturity score.
How much does an AI readiness assessment cost in the UK?
Tenhaw prices the Agent-Readiness Audit between £30,000 and £90,000 as a fixed fee, scaled to organisation size and the number of business units in scope. Large consultancies typically price equivalent assessments between £150,000 and £500,000. The fixed price means the scope is agreed before the work starts and does not expand mid-engagement.
Should we start with the audit or a proof of concept?
Start with the audit if the question is where to invest across the organisation and you need a board-ready case. Start with a proof of concept if you already know which workflow you want to attack and the question is whether it can actually be done. Some clients run the proof of concept first because a working thing persuades internal sceptics that a plan does not.
Who from Tenhaw actually does the work?
James Rooney leads every audit personally. Where specialist input is needed, it comes from an associate he has already delivered alongside, screened to BS7858 standard before any client access, and the people on your engagement are not substituted without your written agreement. Tenhaw does not sell work that someone else then delivers, and there is no pyramid of junior consultants.
Should we hire a Head of AI or run an audit first?
A permanent Head of AI search runs six to nine months, and the specification usually gets written from market narrative. The audit takes six to eight weeks at £30,000 to £90,000 and gives whoever you hire a sequenced, costed plan to arrive into rather than a blank page. If you have already made the hire, the audit is the fastest way to give them a defensible first hundred days. It is not a substitute for the permanent role.
What determines whether an audit costs £30k or £90k?
The number of business units in scope, whether prototyping is included, and how many sites or regions require on-the-ground time. A single business unit in one location with no prototyping sits at the bottom of the range; a group-level audit across four business units and three countries with live prototyping sits at the top. The figure is fixed in writing before the engagement starts.
Can the audit sort out the AI tools we have already bought?
It can tell you which of them are earning their keep. Weeks one and two inventory what is actually in use across the business, sanctioned or not, map each tool to the workflows it touches, and show where two or three of them cover the same job. That overlap, and what each costs to run, then sits in the sequenced plan alongside everything else, and consolidation decisions usually land on the do-not-do list. It is an assessment, not a procurement exercise: nothing on the ladder involves us selling you a licence.
Can the audit be used as AI due diligence before an acquisition?
Yes, scoped to the target or to the business unit under review, at the same fixed price over the same six to eight weeks. Two constraints worth raising on the first call: the method works by sitting with the people doing the work, so it needs access to them rather than to a data room alone, and six to eight weeks is longer than some exclusivity periods allow. It is an operational read on what is real, not legal, financial or regulatory due diligence, and it replaces none of those.
The other rungs
Each one ends in a decision rather than a dependency. If another fits better, we will say so.
Agentic Proof of Concept
Pick the workflow. Two to four weeks later, look at a working thing.
Fixed price · £20k–£55k2–4 weeks03Agentic Design Team
A pair who design the agentic systems, and the infrastructure to run them at scale.
£35k–£55k / month2–4 months04Agentic Build Team
A team of three who build and ship it, under partner oversight.
£70k–£85k / month6–12 months05Programme & Delivery Management
We will govern the programme whether or not we are building any of it.
£18k–£35k / monthProgramme durationTalk it through before you commit.
Thirty minutes with James. We will tell you honestly whether Agent-Readiness Audit is the right rung for where you are, and you will leave with a rough scope whether you engage us or not.
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What this engagement is called elsewhere
An audit is a piece of work rather than a person on your org chart. It is, though, the piece of work a role hire spends their first quarter on, which is why it is often bought instead of a search or immediately before one.
Head of AI, first quarter
Also advertised as: Head of AI, AI strategy lead, Chief AI Officer, diagnostic phase
The audit does what a newly appointed Head of AI would spend their first three months doing: finding where agents pay, where data quality and risk appetite genuinely stop you, and what to do first. Six to eight weeks at a fixed price instead, and you finish able to write the job specification against evidence rather than against whatever the market is currently saying.
Every role here is supplied as an engagement, not a permanent hire or a staffing agency placement. The person is someone James Rooney has already delivered alongside, screened to BS7858 standard before they touch your estate, contracted by Tenhaw under the same confidentiality and data-handling terms as an employee, and accountable to James Rooney as well as to you. They are not substituted without your written agreement. There is no introduction fee and no permanent-placement conversion clause, and notice is thirty days either way. If what you need is a permanent Head of AI on your own payroll, hire one; an interim holds the seat while you run that search, and writes the specification you recruit against.
How the associate pool is selected and screened is set out on our team page, and the day rates behind every figure here are on the rate card.