Advisory review
There is a proposal on the table. Neatly presented, a substantial figure, a term of several years. You can judge whether you like the number. Not whether it buys what you think it buys. From the signature onwards, the burden of proof is yours.
This review covers the moment before signature. I read the proposal as the supplier wrote it, and as you will need it two years from now: which assumptions carry the price, what quietly falls outside scope, which work lands on your desk, and what happens when it slips. The result is a list of points to be written in, or taken out, before you sign.
Not every quotation needs a second reading. These situations do.
A quotation is a story about the future, written by the party that earns from it. Seven points, and per point what it says and what it does not say.
A concise report and a conversation. Not thirty pages on a twelve-page proposal, but what has to be settled before signature, with the reasoning attached.
This is a short engagement by nature: reading the proposal and its annexes, a conversation with you, the report. The size depends on the thickness of the file and on whether I also speak to your people about what was promised verbally. The shape is agreed up front: time-and-materials with a ceiling on hours, or a fixed price for a defined result. I name a rate in the first conversation.
Neither is better; they simply move something different. A fixed price puts overrun risk with the supplier, who prices that risk in, and only works when the scope is sharp enough to carry it. Where it is not, you are not buying certainty, you are buying a change-request argument later. Time-and-materials keeps the price honest, provided there is a ceiling, a reporting rhythm and a point at which you can stop. The question is not the model, but whether the proposal contains the safeguards that model requires.
Yes. A proposal can be assessed without anything to compare it with: on internal consistency, on the relationship between what is promised and what has been costed, and on what a proposal of this kind ought to contain and here does not. Two proposals sharing the same blind spot only confirm each other.
You may, and you need not. I write it so that you can hand it over: no judgements about the firm, but questions about the document. The answer that comes back is information in itself. A supplier who can explain their own assumptions clearly will surprise you less later.
The moment, and therefore your position. This review concerns a proposal not yet signed: everything is still changeable, because you have given nothing away. A second opinion concerns work already under way, where money has been spent and the question is no longer whether to begin. Before signature your position is at its strongest and a correction at its cheapest.
An introductory conversation is without obligation. Sketch what is on the table and when you have to decide; I will say honestly whether a review helps you.