One of our core skills is establishing customers’ needs. We usually devote a lot of effort to properly establishing exactly what it is you need from a controller. That involves a lot of to and fro discussion, be it by email, ‘phone or face to face. During this stage we need your trust and patience, so we can ‘drill down’ and uncover the true situation. This is also our main chance to discover and propose opportunities for cost reduction and/or performance enhancing ideas. The best cost savings result when a customer gives us room to explore the widest possible range of opportunities

The end result will be a functional specification, embedded in a development proposal, that you sign off on before the design starts. This must also include all relevant regulatory standards.

Realistically this stage can take 4-8 weeks. It is also the most important stage.

Getting it right: Specification talk-fest.