Three moves,
run in order.

Plenty of AI people open with a demo. I'd rather spend a day watching how the operation actually runs — the parts counter at 7am, the report someone pulls and then re-types into another system, the question a service writer answers from memory because looking it up takes too long.

This usually takes a week or two. I talk to the people doing the work, not only the ones managing it. And I look hard at the data that genuinely exists — the export with the broken columns, the notes field everyone abuses — rather than the clean dataset you wish you had.

You walk away with a short, plain-language write-up: the one or two things worth fixing first, why I'd start there, and what's realistically possible. No deck. Something you can forward to a partner and actually discuss.

I don't build a prototype to throw away. The first thing I put in front of you runs in your actual environment, handles real edge cases, and breaks in the real ways so we find them now instead of in month three.

Work moves in short stretches — usually a couple of weeks — and each one ends with something you can put your hands on. You try it against your own data and tell me where it's wrong. That feedback is the build process; there isn't a separate 'requirements phase' that pretends to know the answers up front.

I'll be straight about what these models can and can't do reliably. Where a human should stay in the loop, the tool is designed to keep them there from the first version.

Handover isn't a meeting at the end — it starts the day I start building. Your team watches the thing take shape, so nobody is handed a sealed box they're afraid to touch.

I write documentation for the person who'll actually maintain it, not for a compliance binder. I sit with the people who'll use it until they're comfortable. And I stay reachable through the first season it's in real use, when the questions that matter tend to show up.

The point is a tool your team trusts and can run without me. A good engagement makes you more capable, not more dependent on a consultant's phone number.