Cross-pillar programs
Work that spans search, applied AI, and an application frontend at the same time, where splitting it into separate retainers would break the sequencing.
Custom Engagements
When the standard program is the wrong shape
Most work fits one of the nine pillars. Some does not. This is the route for the projects that need their own scope, sequence, and commercial terms.
What is a custom engagement?
A custom engagement is scoped work that does not map to one of our standard programs. It carries its own written scope, sequence, and fixed commercial terms, and it usually spans more than one discipline or has a hard deadline attached.
Programs exist because most problems repeat. A technical foundation build, an answer engine program, a measurement rebuild. Those have a known shape and a known sequence, and pricing them as programs keeps them honest. The pages under services describe every one of them.
Then there is the other category. A company retiring two domains into one while rebuilding the frontend and standing up an internal AI workflow at the same time. A board deadline that forces three workstreams to run in parallel. A question that needs a real investigation before anyone can responsibly propose a program at all. Forcing that into a retainer template produces a bad retainer.
We scope those separately. You get a written document before any money moves, and the document states what we are not doing as clearly as what we are.
Shapes
Four shapes this usually takes
If your situation looks like one of these, a custom scope is probably cheaper than bending a program around it.
Migration and consolidation
Multiple properties collapsing into one, with URL mapping, redirect engineering, and a measured recovery window against a captured baseline.
Fixed-scope diagnostics
A defined investigation with a written deliverable. No retainer attached, no obligation to continue with us afterward.
Embedded capacity
A block of senior time inside your team for a set period, working in your repository and your rituals rather than ours.
Process
How a custom engagement gets defined
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them.
Step 1: Diagnosis call
Forty five minutes on the actual constraint. If a standard program solves it, we say so and point you at the right page.
Step 2: Written scope
A short document with the problem statement, what we will do, what we will not do, the sequence, and the measurement plan.
Step 3: Fixed commercial terms
Either a fixed fee against the scope or a time block with a stated rate. No open-ended hourly billing.
Step 4: Build and hand back
We ship in visible increments, document decisions in writing, and leave your team able to run the result without us.
Commercials
How these are priced
We do not publish a rate card for custom work, because a number without a scope is noise. What we will commit to is the structure: a fixed fee against a written scope, or a time block at a stated rate with a hard ceiling. Never open-ended hourly billing against a vague brief.
The pricing page explains how our standard programs are shaped and what ranges they live in. Custom engagements are quoted against that same logic, so nothing about the number will feel arbitrary once you see the scope it is attached to.
Describe the constraint, not the deliverable
Tell us what is actually blocking the outcome. If a standard program solves it, we will say so.