Engagement shapes, pricing,
and delivery process.
A practical document for the engineering leader buying the work and the procurement team signing the contract. Everything here applies across all three services. Adoption, agentic systems, and compliance.
Start where
it hurts.
Founders without a senior technical co-founder turning an idea into a shipped MVP.
Product and technical scoping, architecture and stack selection, build-vs-buy calls, and hands-on delivery as fractional CTO. We stay long enough for the architecture to survive the first 12 months of growth, then hand over to a permanent team.
- Product and technical scoping
- Architecture and stack selection
- Hands-on delivery as fractional CTO
Founders, CTOs, and investors needing an unbiased read on code, architecture, and team before a fundraise, acquisition, or leadership change.
Independent assessment of code quality, architecture, technical debt, scalability, security, and delivery practice. The output is a board-ready report with a 30/60/90-day remediation plan and an executive summary that translates the engineering detail for non-technical readers.
- Code and architecture review
- Technical debt inventory with prioritised remediation
- Board-ready written report
Four shapes.
Pick the one the situation calls for.
Diagnostic
- Duration
- 60 minutes
- Fees
- Complimentary
- Team
- Senior partner
Starting point for every engagement. Understand the problem and confirm fit before either side commits.
- Structured conversation on current state, constraints, goals
- Initial read on whether we are the right fit
- If yes, a short scoping note within 3 business days
Hands-on Demo
- Duration
- 60-90 minutes
- Fees
- Complimentary
- Team
- Senior partner
For teams who want to see how we actually work before buying. Live walkthrough of an agentic SDLC workflow in a real repository, not a slide deck.
- Live demo of the practice on a representative codebase
- Q&A on tools, guardrails, and what transfers to your stack
- Follow-up summary with anything you ask us to send
Sprint
- Duration
- 2-8 weeks
- Fees
- Time-and-materials, monthly
- Team
- Senior partner, agent-augmented
Time-boxed, specific outcome. Ideal for proof points, targeted enablement, or solving a bounded problem before committing to longer-term work.
- Scoped outcome defined in a short statement of work
- Weekly working-session demos with the client team
- Closeout artifact and recommendation on next steps
Embedded Retainer
- Duration
- 12 months typical
- Fees
- Time-and-materials, monthly
- Team
- Senior partner, agent-augmented, specialists on demand
Continuous senior engagement for organisations rolling AI across engineering, running adoption programmes, or standing up and operating agentic systems in production.
- Baseline ~35 hours per week per partner, flexible up or down
- 2-month notice either side, re-contract option before the end of term
- Monthly delivery review with forecast for the month ahead
Time-and-materials,
honest about unknowns.
Time-and-materials, billed monthly
Every engagement after Diagnostic and Demo is priced on time-and-materials. You pay for actual senior-partner work delivered, reconciled against timesheets, invoiced monthly. We do not do fixed-bid, retainer-fixed, or outcome-contingent pricing.
Why not fixed-bid
AI adoption uncovers scope as the work progresses. A good diagnostic does not reveal everything. The first weeks of hands-on work do. Fixed-bid engagements force both sides to over-price for unknowns at the start and argue about scope later. T&M with a disclosed monthly ceiling puts both sides on the same side of the table.
How we estimate
Sprints are quoted with a fixed duration and a monthly hour ceiling. Retainers are quoted with a baseline weekly commitment (typically around 35 hours per partner) and a re-forecast every month. If we land under the ceiling we invoice the lower number. Over-runs require written approval from the client side.
Invoicing
Monthly in arrears, against timesheets with line-item detail for the hours worked. Singapore-incorporated entity, invoicing available in SGD or USD, GST applied where applicable. Standard net-14 or net-30 terms, flexible for enterprise procurement requirements.
Included
Senior partner time, agent-augmented delivery capacity, specialist network bandwidth when an engagement benefits from it (always under the senior partner). All work product created during the engagement, with IP assigned to the client on delivery.
Excluded
Travel and related expenses are excluded from the baseline fee and invoiced at cost only where required and pre-approved. Third-party tool licences and infrastructure (model provider tokens, cloud usage, seat-based tools like Cursor or Copilot) are held in the client's own accounts.
Rates are set per engagement and quoted during Scoping. We do not publish a standard rate card. Enterprise clients can request a rate sheet under mutual NDA alongside the security and procurement pack.
From first conversation
to closeout or re-contract.
- 01
Diagnostic
60 minute conversation. We understand the problem, the constraints, the people, and what a good outcome looks like from your side. If we are not the right fit, we say so.
- 02
Scoping
One to two weeks. We define the specific outcome, team shape, timeline, and success criteria in writing. You receive a short scoped proposal you can take to procurement.
- 03
Kickoff
Mutual NDA signed. Access provisioned through your SSO. Success criteria confirmed. Communication channels agreed (typically a shared Slack or Teams channel plus weekly calendar cadence).
- 04
Delivery cadence
Weekly working-session demos where we show what shipped, what is in flight, and what we need from your side. Monthly invoices against timesheet detail. Shared dashboard visible to both sides for anything quantitative we agreed to track.
- 05
Checkpoint
At the four-week mark on Sprints. Quarterly on Embedded Retainers. Structured review of progress against the original success criteria, with honest discussion of what to adjust, expand, or wind down.
- 06
Closeout or re-contract
Artifacts handed over, IP transferred, access revoked. For continuing engagements, re-contract happens before the current term ends with continuity of the same senior partner.
Measured against a baseline.
Reported honestly.
AI engagements are hard to attribute cleanly. Several things usually improve at once. A new tool, a new workflow, clearer guardrails, renewed energy on the team. We design the measurement approach so the client can tell what is working, what is not, and what to scale.
Baselines before we start
Before kickoff we document baseline metrics in writing. Cycle time, PR review latency, defect rates, test coverage, adoption rates, time-to-answer for internal knowledge questions. Whatever is relevant to the engagement goal.
What we measure during
A small set of quantitative metrics agreed at kickoff, reviewed monthly. Plus qualitative signals from the engineers actually using the changes. Adoption rate is the single most honest indicator for an AI adoption engagement.
What we report
Weekly qualitative updates tied to what shipped that week. Monthly quantitative review against the baseline. Honest commentary on where the work has moved the needle and where it has not.
What we avoid
Over-claiming attribution. If PR review time dropped 60% during an engagement, some of that is us, some is the team, some is compounding investments from before we arrived. We report the signal and let the client-side leadership draw their own conclusions.
No calculators
We do not publish an ROI calculator. Engagements vary too much on baseline, team size, risk appetite, and regulatory context for a single-number input to be useful. If you need a defensible estimate for an internal business case, we assemble one during Scoping with your actual numbers.
Clear about
what is out of scope.
No resale and no vendor referral commissions. We are tool-agnostic and stay that way.
No staff augmentation. We work on engagement outcomes, not on placing bodies in seats.
No fixed-bid. See the pricing section above.
No outsourced delivery without senior-partner ownership. Everything on the client side flows through a named partner.
No training delivery as a standalone product. Training is always embedded in live work on the client's own systems.
No public use of client artifacts without written permission. See the Trust page for the full confidentiality posture.
The questions
finance and legal ask first.
01What is the minimum engagement?
A paid Sprint. Diagnostic and Hands-on Demo are complimentary but are sales conversations, not engagements.
02What currencies and taxes apply?
We invoice in SGD or USD. Singapore GST is applied where applicable. For non-Singapore clients with a Singapore-nexus engagement, zero-rating may apply. Confirmed at contracting.
03What are standard payment terms?
Net-14 on first invoice, net-30 thereafter is our default. We work with longer terms where enterprise procurement requires, subject to mutual agreement.
04Which entity signs the contract?
VG Tech Consulting Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-incorporated entity. We have contracted with counterparties across APAC, the UK, and the US.
05Can the engagement pause mid-term?
Yes. Embedded Retainers include a pause clause allowing either side to suspend for up to 4 weeks without restarting notice. Used rarely, documented in the contract.
06Can we start with a Sprint and expand into a Retainer?
Yes. Most Retainer clients start with a Sprint first. If a Retainer is the right next step we move into it on the same senior partner with no re-onboarding.
07How do you handle change of scope?
In writing. A short change-note amends the original SOW with the revised scope and monthly ceiling. Change-notes are signed by the same signatories as the original SOW.
08What insurances do you carry?
Professional indemnity appropriate to enterprise engagements. Certificates available on request alongside the security and procurement pack.
Start with a Diagnostic,
or request the procurement pack.
Most engagements start with the 60-minute Diagnostic. For enterprise evaluations, we can share a procurement pack with the MSA and NDA templates, pre-filled security questionnaires, and rate sheet under mutual NDA.