Agentic Build Team
A team of three who build and ship it, under partner oversight.
30 days' notice either way
Monthly, cancellable on 30 days' written notice either way. The exit date and the taper are agreed at kickoff, and you own all deliverables, documentation and code on payment.
£420k–£1.02m across 6–12 months
Derived from the published rate card, so you can check the arithmetic.
Three forward-deployed practitioners (interim agentic lead, engineer, adoption lead) under partner oversight from James Rooney.
Yes. One forward-deployed engineer building in your repositories at the published senior practitioner rate of £1,250 a day, alongside the interim agentic lead at the same rate and the adoption lead at the associate rate of £950. Three people, and the team does not get bigger than that.
All three are screened to BS7858 standard before they touch your estate, and are not substituted without your written agreement. Liability is capped per engagement in the SOW, with confidentiality and data protection treated separately. Insurance figures are published in full on the security page. We hold no client production data and work inside your estate under your controls, which is what limits the exposure these lines answer for, and cover levels can be increased for a specific engagement where your supplier standard requires it: raise it on the first call and we will price the increase into the engagement.
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.
An Agentic Build Team is three forward-deployed Tenhaw practitioners (an interim agentic lead, an engineer and an adoption lead) who build and ship agentic systems inside your estate, with James Rooney providing partner oversight on every engagement. Engagements are structured around a monthly delivery increment rather than a distant go-live, and the team pair-programs with your own people so the capability stays behind. It runs at £70,000–£85,000 per month. In role terms it is an interim head of AI delivery and the team under them, supplied as an engagement, not as three permanent hires.
What you get
In scope for the £70k–£85k monthly fee.
- Agentic workflows built and shipped inside your estate, on a monthly increment
- Adoption owned explicitly and measured
- Your own engineers pair-programmed into the method, with the transfer measured
- Governance, audit trails and human-in-the-loop gates built in rather than retrofitted
- Partner oversight from James Rooney, not an account-management layer
- A dated exit with the capability owned by your permanent team
What happens if a month fails
Engagements are structured around a monthly production increment. A commitment with no consequence attached is a slogan, so this is what happens in the month it is not met.
- 01
A failed month is called a failed month
Each month the team commits in writing to something measurable reaching production. A month that ends with nothing in production is reported to your sponsor as a failed month, in those words, in the same pack as everything else. It does not get renamed a discovery month.
- 02
The report says why, not that it was complex
The report names what was committed, what actually shipped, and the specific cause: whether it sat with us, with a dependency someone else owned, or with a decision that did not get made. It states what changes next month, and it goes to the sponsor inside the same reporting cycle rather than at the next steering committee.
- 03
You can end it, on 30 days' notice
Retainer engagements are terminable by either party on 30 days' written notice under our published terms of business. Two failed months without a credible cause is a reasonable moment to use that, and we would rather you did than defend a bad engagement to month nine.
- 04
You keep everything either way
On payment of the applicable fees you own all deliverables, documentation, designs and code created for you, including anything built during a month that failed. Tenhaw asserts no ownership over anything in your environment.
The notice period and the ownership position are in the standard terms every engagement is contracted under, and the monthly commitment is written into the Statement of Work. Read the terms of business→
Built to leave
A build engagement is structured so that ending it is straightforward, and that structure is in place from the first day rather than assembled at the end. Four things make it real.
- 01
The work lives in your estate
Working software is deployed on your infrastructure, in your repositories, under your controls and your organisation's policies. When the engagement ends there is nothing to migrate off our estate, because nothing was ever on it.
- 02
Your people learn the method by doing it
Your own permanent engineers pair-program with ours for the whole build rather than for a handover fortnight at the end, and the transfer is measured. Recruiting the permanent team is an explicit deliverable, and the final sixty days are a documented handover with a decreasing-involvement taper.
- 03
The method is published in full
The delivery method the team runs is published on this site, free to adopt without hiring us. Nothing the engagement depends on is proprietary knowledge that leaves when we do.
- 04
The exit is contractual
Thirty days' notice either way, an exit date and taper agreed at kickoff, and on payment you own all deliverables, documentation and code. The end of the engagement is written down before it starts.
The first three hold for the whole engagement while it runs. The fourth is in the standard terms and the Statement of Work before the engagement begins. Read the published method→
How the engagement runs, week by week
6–12 months, drawn to scale so you can see how long each part actually takes.
- 01Month 1
Embed properly: real reporting line, real decision rights, real access. A team without authority is an expensive advisory function.
- 02Months 2–4
Ship something that matters into production, with the governance around it, to prove the pattern in your environment rather than in a demo.
- 03Months 5–9
Scale the pattern, upskill your engineers alongside ours, and recruit the permanent team while the work is live rather than after we leave.
- 04Final 60 days· Exit
Deliberate exit: documented handover, permanent team in post, and a decreasing-involvement taper agreed at kickoff rather than negotiated at the end.
- Month 1
Embed properly: real reporting line, real decision rights, real access. A team without authority is an expensive advisory function.
- Months 2–4
Ship something that matters into production, with the governance around it, to prove the pattern in your environment rather than in a demo.
- Months 5–9
Scale the pattern, upskill your engineers alongside ours, and recruit the permanent team while the work is live rather than after we leave.
- Final 60 daysExit
Deliberate exit: documented handover, permanent team in post, and a decreasing-involvement taper agreed at kickoff rather than negotiated at the end.
Is this the right rung for you?
We would rather tell you now than three weeks in.
Right for you if
- Organisations that need the capability built, not described
- Boards that have appointed a Head of AI and need a delivery team under them now
- Businesses whose internal teams are at capacity but whose agenda is not
- Leadership teams whose last transformation stalled on politics rather than technology
- Anyone who wants their own engineers upskilled by working alongside ours
Not right if
- Organisations wanting advice they can take or leave: this team holds accountability
- Businesses unwilling to give the team genuine decision rights and access
- Programmes needing hundreds of people mobilised across many countries
Prefer to talk it through? Ask us on a discovery call →
Agentic workflows running in production with named business owners.
£70k–£85k / month·6–12 months·Rung 04
- A monthly increment you can hold the team to from month one
- A permanent internal team in post and operating
- A dated exit plan, agreed at kickoff
Agentic Build Team: your questions
Who is actually on an agentic build team?
Three forward-deployed practitioners: an Agentic Lead who owns the operating model and decision rights, a Forward-Deployed Engineer who builds and ships inside your estate, and an Adoption Lead who owns the part that usually fails, getting people to actually work the new way. James Rooney provides partner oversight on every engagement. Everyone on the team is someone 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.
What is an interim agentic lead?
An interim agentic lead is a senior practitioner who runs an organisation's agentic delivery from inside its management structure for a defined period rather than as a permanent employee. At Tenhaw the role sits at the front of the Agentic Build Team: real decision rights, a real reporting line, accountability for a monthly production increment, and a dated exit with the capability owned by your permanent team. James Rooney is embedded in that role on a live engagement inside a London specialty insurance business, which is where the method on this site is being run in anger.
Can we take the agentic lead on their own, without the rest of the team?
Not from this rung. A build team is three people because shipping needs three: someone holding delivery, someone building, and someone owning adoption. If what you want is one senior person holding delivery, governance and supplier management while other people build, that is programme and delivery management at £18,000 to £35,000 a month, and it can be run fractionally from around three days a week. We would rather point you at the cheaper rung than sell you two people you do not need.
How often does the team deliver something?
Engagements are structured around a monthly production increment rather than a distant go-live, so you can judge the work on evidence within the first thirty days. Each month the team commits to something measurable reaching production and reports against it; a month with nothing in production is reported as a failed month. This is the commitment we ask to be held to from month one.
What stops us becoming dependent on Tenhaw?
The exit is designed at kickoff rather than negotiated at the end. The team pair-programs with your engineers throughout, recruiting your permanent team is an explicit deliverable, and the final sixty days are a documented handover with a decreasing-involvement taper. On a recent engagement, a client engineer who paired on a two-week build finished it 70% confident they could run the process unaided.
How much does an agentic build team cost?
£70,000–£85,000 per month for a team of three under partner oversight, typically on a 6–12 month engagement. That is comparable to a mid-sized consultancy engagement team, but resolves to three senior practitioners accountable for the outcome rather than a pyramid of juniors.
The other rungs
Each one ends in a decision rather than a dependency. If another fits better, we will say so.
Agent-Readiness Audit
Where agents add value, where they don't, and what to do first.
Fixed price · £30k–£90k6–8 weeks02Agentic 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 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 Agentic Build Team is the right rung for where you are, and you will leave with a rough scope whether you engage us or not.
Can't see the calendar? Open it in a new tab.
What this engagement is called elsewhere
Three seats, held for the length of the engagement, inside your management structure rather than alongside it. This is the rung people reach when the permanent team does not exist yet and the work cannot wait for it.
Interim agentic lead
Also advertised as: interim head of AI delivery, AI delivery lead, agentic delivery lead
Runs the delivery from inside your management structure with a real reporting line, real decision rights and accountability for a monthly production increment. It is the seat organisations most often try to fill permanently and cannot fill quickly, and holding it on an engagement is how the work starts before the search finishes. James Rooney is currently embedded in exactly this role inside a London specialty insurance business.
Forward-deployed engineer
Also advertised as: AI engineer, agentic engineer, senior software engineer, AI
Builds and ships inside your estate, in your repositories, pair-programming with your engineers so the method transfers while the work is live rather than at a handover workshop afterwards.
Adoption lead
Also advertised as: change lead, business change manager, AI adoption manager
Owns the part that usually fails, which is getting people to actually work the new way, measured rather than assumed. It is the role most often cut from a business case and most often the reason the business case does not land.
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.