Closer look · CAD $750 · 2-hour session

Data & Information Architecture Review

One focused on-site or working session watching how information actually moves through a specific workflow in your business, where it stalls, gets re-entered, or gets lost. You leave with a concrete, scoped pilot recommendation.

U.S. clients: USD $750. Applicable taxes are added based on your jurisdiction.

What actually happens

I sit with whoever owns the workflow, your estimator, your coordinator, your office manager, and watch how information moves. Where does a number get typed twice? Where does a document wait in someone's inbox for two days? Where does project knowledge live only in one person's head?

Most businesses are surprised by what turns up. The bottleneck is rarely where the owner thinks it is.

You leave with

A map of how information actually flows through the workflow we examined
The specific stall points, re-entry points, and knowledge risks, named
A concrete, scoped pilot recommendation, bounded, costed, with success criteria

What this is not

Not a technical audit

I'm not poking your servers or reviewing your security. I'm watching how work moves.

Not implementation

Nothing gets built in this session. The output is the pilot plan, not the pilot.

Not open-ended

Bounded to what we can observe in the session. If more is needed, that becomes a scoped next step.

From a client engagement

Where an excavation company’s estimating hours went.

For one excavation company, the discovery review identified the proposal process as the highest-leverage point. The workflow we designed targets under 90 minutes of active staff time per proposal. The engagement did not go ahead, so this is a design target, not a result.

Why watching beats asking

Ask someone how a workflow runs and you get the org-chart version. Watch it for two hours and you get the truth: the number typed into three different systems, the PDF renamed by hand every time, the two-day stall inside one person's inbox, the spreadsheet only Dana understands.

AI fails in trades businesses when it is pointed at the org-chart version of work. It succeeds when it is pointed at the real one, the re-entry points, the rename-by-hand steps, the knowledge trapped in one head. The Review exists to find the real one before anyone builds anything.

The pilot recommendation at the end is deliberately small: one workflow, bounded, costed, with success criteria written down. It is the smallest thing that would prove value, not the biggest thing anyone could sell you.

A good fit if

A specific workflow is visibly eating hours and you want it fixed properly
You have tried a tool or two and watched them die on contact with reality
You want the pilot scoped by someone who has actually watched the work

Probably not if

You have not named the painful workflow yet, the Quick Scan finds it first
You want servers, security or infrastructure audited, that is not this

Common questions

Asked before you have to.

Who from my team needs to be there?

The person who actually runs the workflow, plus whoever owns the outcome if it is different people. Two hours of their time. Nobody else.

Will you need access to our systems?

Watch-level access only, screenshares and observation. No credentials, no installs, nothing touched. The Review maps how work moves; it does not audit your stack.

What does the pilot recommendation include?

The bounded workflow, what would be built, roughly what it costs, the baseline we would measure against, and the success criteria agreed in advance. One page, plain language.

Is CAD $750 credited toward the pilot if we proceed?

The Review is standalone, you are paying for the map and the plan, which you keep either way. If we proceed, the pilot is scoped from that plan so no work is paid for twice.