Services

Productised engagements. Fixed scope. Working artefact at the end.

Every engagement below has a defined deliverable, a fixed fee, and a handover. If you're not sure which fits — or whether I'm the right person at all — the Diagnostic Hour at the bottom of this page is the right starting point: 90 minutes, $1,500, credited in full against any subsequent engagement.

01 / 06

Engagement · 12 weeks

AI Knowledge Platform Pilot

ForAEC firms, 100–600 staff. Multi-office. Knowledge fragmentation across teams.

The brief

"Our team is drowning in tribal knowledge. We tried a chatbot. It died."

What ships

Production RAG system — single workflow, single user group, deployed across 1–3 offices. Onboarding workshop and 30-day support included.

Duration

12 weeks

Fee

$65K–$95K · fixed

Out of scope

Multi-language UI localisation (the platform runs in English; front-end translation is a separate engagement). Custom UI components beyond standard. Integration with more than 2 source systems.

Receipt: Bollinger Grohmann Knowledge Hub — 19 offices, 9 countries, 62% adoption in six months, 70% reduction in search time.

Enquire about AI Knowledge Platform Pilot

02 / 06

Engagement · 12 weeks

Design Technology Strategy & Roadmap

ForPartner-led architecture firms exploring or restructuring a digital function.

The brief

"We need a digital strategy, and we don't trust a strategy consultancy to write it."

What ships

30-page roadmap — tools, hires, sequencing, budget. 2-day workshop with leadership. Hiring kit for the function's first three roles.

Duration

12 weeks

Fee

$40K–$55K · fixed

Out of scope

Implementation. That's a separate engagement.

Receipt: built Hayball's design tech function from scratch — 5 people, 3 offices, 30–40% efficiency gains.

Enquire about Design Technology Strategy & Roadmap

03 / 06

Engagement · 6–10 weeks

Computational Tool Build

ForDesign tech leads, computational design teams.

The brief

"We re-solve the same parametric problem on every project. We need a tool, not a script."

What ships

Production-grade Grasshopper / Dynamo / Python / TypeScript tool. Documentation, test files, team onboarding session.

Duration

6–10 weeks

Fee

$25K–$50K · fixed

Out of scope

Long-term maintenance (separate retainer).

Receipt: Hayball Architects — Radiation Analytics Tool, Façade Design Tool, and Rapid Feasibility Tool. All in daily production use across three Melbourne studios.

Enquire about Computational Tool Build

04 / 06

Engagement · 4–6 weeks

Spatial Product Architecture Sprint

ForSpatial / vertical-AI founders, pre- to post-seed.

The brief

"We need to ship a 3D / AI / spatial feature in v2 and we don't want to lock ourselves into the wrong stack."

What ships

Architecture document. Working spike of the riskiest component. Hiring brief for the team that maintains it. 4-hour walk-through with engineering.

Duration

4–6 weeks

Fee

$25K–$40K · fixed

Out of scope

Full implementation — separate engagement.

Receipt: Imersian co-founder; AI 3D pipeline shipped to B2B + D2C.

Enquire about Spatial Product Architecture Sprint

05 / 06

Retainer · monthly

Fractional CPO / Operator

ForFounders pre-Series A who need someone who can own product, AI, and commercial — not just one of them.

The brief

"I need a co-founder-grade operator for a quarter without diluting equity."

What ships

2 days per week embedded across product, engineering, and where needed, marketing and sales. 1 strategy day per month with the founder. I've run all of these functions at Imersian — I'm not advising on them from the outside.

Duration

1 quarter minimum · renewable

Fee

$18K / month · 3-month minimum

Out of scope

Equity. Cash-only.

Receipt: Imersian — bootstrapped, 4–5 person team across all functions, full-funnel marketing, investor pitching, P&L, and product engineering run concurrently as CEO & CPO.

Enquire about Fractional CPO / Operator

06 / 06

Entry point

Diagnostic Hour

ForAnyone unsure which engagement fits.

The brief

"I need a senior opinion before I commit budget."

What ships

90-minute call. Written one-page diagnostic the next day.

Duration

1 week (call + write-up)

Fee

$1,500 · credited fully against any subsequent engagement

Out of scope

Free advice.

Enquire about Diagnostic Hour

What we don't do

Honest about the refusals.

If you need any of the below, I'll refer you on. I only take scoped, shippable engagements — not open-ended retainers or fill-in roles.

  • ×Hourly retainers without scope
  • ×12-month staff augmentation
  • ×Pure strategy decks without a build artefact
  • ×AI training as a course
  • ×Front-end-only dev work
  • ×Brand identity / marketing creative

Common Questions

What people usually ask.

What should an architecture firm look for in an AI consultant?

Avoid anyone who can't name the RAG pipeline they've actually shipped. The failure mode I see most often: a generic tech consultancy that has never been inside an AEC firm, paired with a partner who doesn't speak Python. You want someone who has been the head of digital you're trying to hire — who has stood in front of partners and explained why the chatbot died at month two, and what to do instead. The credential is shipped production systems, not slide decks.

How much does an AI implementation cost for an architecture firm?

A production RAG knowledge platform — single workflow, single user group, deployed across 1–3 offices — runs $65K–$95K fixed. That covers end-to-end design, build, deployment, and a 30-day support handover. The right benchmark isn't an hourly contractor rate; it's the cost of the next failed pilot — three to six months of senior internal time, an unused vendor licence, and a partner-level credibility hit. I don't do hourly and I don't do discovery-only retainers.

What does an agentic AI workflow look like in an engineering firm?

It starts with the task your team avoids because the existing tools are too slow — finding the right precedent drawing, pulling the relevant calculation from three projects ago, summarising a 200-page specification against a standard. An agentic workflow wraps that task in a retrieval layer, a reasoning layer, and a citation layer, so the output is both fast and verifiable. The citation UI is non-negotiable in an engineering context: every answer needs to link back to the source document, or your engineers won't trust it past month one.

What is the difference between BIM automation and design technology?

BIM automation speeds up documentation inside Revit or similar — faster sheets, cleaner clash detection, automated schedules. Design technology is broader: it encompasses computational geometry, bespoke tool development, data pipelines, and increasingly AI systems that operate across the firm's entire knowledge base. The distinction matters for hiring and scoping. If the problem is 'our Revit standards are inconsistent,' that's BIM automation. If the problem is 'our engineers keep re-solving the same problems from scratch,' that's design technology — and it's what I work on.

Work with me

Not sure which one fits?

The Diagnostic Hour is the right starting point. 90 minutes, $1,500, credited against any subsequent engagement.

contact@vencolab.com