Productized engineering. Senior practitioners. Published prices.

Productized engagements run 4–12 weeks with defined scope, weekly demos, and a written deliverables list. Strategic and advisory work runs on a monthly retainer with a 30-day exit clause. We confirm the timeline in writing before any work starts and send a written status update the moment scope shifts — never quietly absorb it.

Most clients land on a 6–8 week first engagement: enough runway to ship a real artifact (an audit report with remediation PRs, a security review with proof-of-concept exploits, an accessibility VPAT with WCAG-mapped findings) and prove the working relationship. From there a follow-on engagement or a retainer is a natural next step. Browse the productized engagement catalog for specific timeline anchors per practice area.

Productized engagements are time-and-materials with a published cap — we quote a price anchor up front from the rate card and we do not exceed it without your written approval. The cap is the cap; we eat the overrun if we miss our own estimate.

True fixed-price is available for clearly-bounded audits and assessments — VPAT/ACR, an AI security review, a healthcare-AI compliance review. For exploratory or research work where the scope is genuinely fluid, T&M-with-cap is the right shape — fixed-price would force us to pad the quote against unknowns, and you'd pay for that padding.

If you're not sure which fits, tell us on the intro call and we'll route you. Both are real options.

We publish hourly rates by discipline on the rate card — $175–$300/hr depending on which discipline does the work. The same rate card backs every productized engagement; the cap on each engagement is computed from those rates plus a scoping buffer, so you can always reconcile the math.

Use ad-hoc when scope is genuinely fluid — a board prep, a vendor evaluation, an architecture spike, a deposition-grade accessibility opinion — and you need senior judgment without a fixed-deliverable contract. Use a productized engagement when the scope is clear and you want anchor pricing with a published deliverable list.

Hourly engagements are billed in 15-minute increments against a written work order, capped weekly so the spend never surprises you. Send the situation on the contact form with "ad-hoc" in the message and we'll come back with a work order, not a sales cadence.

Yes to all three. We sign mutual NDAs at the intro-call stage if you need one before the conversation starts, MSAs at engagement kickoff, and BAAs for any work that touches PHI or healthcare-adjacent systems.

Our healthcare-AI compliance practice is built around BAA-chain rigor — we treat the BAA as table stakes, not a stretch, and we can articulate where each subprocessor in our toolchain (model providers, vector stores, observability) sits in the chain. Same logic for accessibility deposition support: we sign confidentiality agreements that survive the engagement.

Send the paper on the intro call request and we'll have it back, redlined or executed, before the call.

30-minute intro call to define the problem and confirm fit — no SDR layer, no qualification cadence. You talk to the principal who would lead the engagement, on the call you'd actually have during it.

If it is a fit: written proposal with scope, deliverables, timeline, and a published price anchor within 3 business days. If it is not: we tell you on the call and refer you when we can — usually to one of the specialists on our extended bench or to a peer firm we trust.

Start it on the contact form with the real situation: what broke, what decisions led there, what you've already tried. The more specific, the faster this goes — vague briefs make the intro call less useful for both sides.

BST is a deliberately small senior team — principal-led with a recurring bench of vetted specialists. Most engagements are led by Jake and pull in specialists by discipline (accessibility audit, AI red-team, healthcare compliance review) when the scope calls for it.

The bench grows when the work warrants it; capacity never scales by hiring junior offshore. We keep our client list small on purpose, because past a certain line every engagement starts to feel like the second-best version of itself. If we don't have a slot the week you ask, we'll tell you on the intro call and offer a real start date — not a maybe.

Read how we operate for the long version: who we hire onto the bench, how we structure compensation so specialists pick up our calls, and why we publish our rate card instead of negotiating it.

You hear about it before the invoice does. The moment we see scope drifting, we send a written change-order: new scope, new cap, your written approval is required before continuing. If the answer is "no, descope something else," we descope something else. If the answer is "stop, we'll think about it," we stop.

The cap is the cap — we eat the overrun if we miss our own estimate. That's the deal across every productized engagement and the entire rate card. It's also why we publish weekly status updates on every engagement: scope drift caught at week 2 is a 5-minute conversation; caught at week 8 is a fight.