Nine steps, roughly three weeks end to end for a Standard review, and no surprises about scope or price along the way.
Tell me roughly what you’re building and what stage it’s at. I reply within one working day.
Same day, or the next oneWhat the design is, how big, what you’re worried about, and when you need it. Worth having whoever owns the release decision on the call, because most of what I need to establish is about what you’re committing to and when.
No charge, no obligationTwo pages. Review type and tier, the exact list of files that make up the package, what is explicitly out of scope, the price, and the turnaround. Valid 30 days.
Within 2 working days of the callYou accept, and the same day I send the list of what to send and in what format. Being specific about formats here saves days later.
Same dayWithin one working day of it arriving, I either confirm it is complete and start, or list exactly what is missing. The clock starts at completeness, not at the order, and that is written into the proposal.
Within 1 working dayFour passes: orientation, then the checklist worked top to bottom, then a cross-cutting pass on interfaces and cross-document consistency, then grading. Questions come to you in one batch rather than a trickle of emails.
3, 7 or 15 working days by tierMarked as a draft, and issued for comment. If I find something that means you should stop a fab release booked for tomorrow, you get a phone call the day I find it rather than a line in a report two weeks later.
On the date promisedHeld a few days after the draft so your team has read it. I explain findings rather than defend them. If you produce information that changes one, it changes, and the report says so.
Standard and Deep tiersYour responses recorded against each finding, queries resolved or published as open with their consequence stated, and a signed statement of professional opinion. Plus the findings register as a spreadsheet your team can work in.
Within 3 working days of the callNot at the order. An incomplete package is the single biggest cause of a late report, so the clock starts when I confirm everything has arrived, and I tell you within a day if it hasn’t.
Draft, your comments, final. Extra cycles are chargeable, and I have yet to need one.
If what arrives is materially bigger than what we scoped, I stop and requote before starting rather than after. You can accept the new number or cancel with nothing owed if I haven’t begun.
The same checklist behind all three. What changes is the depth, and how much of it gets independently verified rather than read.
These are starting prices, because a Scan on a 6 sheet board is not the same work as a Scan on a 40 sheet one. You get one firm number in the proposal before anything begins, and it does not move afterwards unless the package does.
From£750
plus VAT
Buy this when a decision is due this week, or to work out whether a full review is worth it. It will not catch subtle timing problems or verify anything against a datasheet in detail, and the report says so.
EnquireFrom£2,750
plus VAT
The default, and what most designs need. If a package turns out messier than expected I absorb the third day rather than come back for more.
EnquireFrom£6,500
plus VAT
For a release that is expensive to repeat, or when a customer, investor or certification body wants documented evidence of independent review. Quoted per job above 5 days.
Enquire| Situation | Effect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Rush, turnaround halved | ×1.5 | It displaces other work and my evenings |
| Large package: over 40 schematic sheets, or over 12 layers | ×1.25 to ×1.5 | Effort scales with sheet and layer count |
| Two review types in one engagement | ×0.9 on the second | There is real efficiency, so you get some of it |
| High-reliability evidence required | ×1.25 | The evidence burden is the work |
Size and complexity set where in each tier a job lands, so the figures above are starting points rather than a menu. Sheet count, layer count, lines of RTL, requirement count: I ask for those on the scoping call precisely so the proposal can carry one firm price.
Once the proposal is signed, that price holds. If the package that arrives is materially bigger than what we scoped, I stop and requote before starting rather than after, and you can accept it or cancel with nothing owed.
All prices exclude VAT. New clients: 50% on order, 50% on delivery of the final report. Established clients: 14 days net. Minimum engagement £750 plus VAT.
The exact list depends on the review and comes with the proposal. Two things matter more than the list itself.
Everything at one consistent revision. A schematic at rev C with a layout at rev B costs a day of untangling before any reviewing happens, and it produces phantom findings that waste your time as well as mine.
Tell me when something doesn’t exist. “We don’t have a stackup document” is useful information. Silence isn’t, and it holds up the start while I wait for a file nobody was ever going to send.
Native design data is always better than a plot. ODB++ or IPC-2581 rather than bare Gerbers, the CAD project rather than a PDF, the repository rather than a source archive. If you can only share some of it, say so and I will tell you honestly what that costs you in review coverage.
| Item | Format |
|---|---|
| Schematic, all sheets | Searchable PDF, plus native |
| BOM with manufacturer part numbers | XLSX or CSV |
| Block diagram and power tree | Any, hand drawn is fine |
| Datasheets for the main devices | PDF, or part numbers |
| Environment and standards | Email is fine |
| What you are already worried about | Email is fine |
Happy to work under your NDA or mine. Everything is stored encrypted and separately per client, your design files are deleted 90 days after close-out with written confirmation, and I keep only what supports the opinion I gave.
Stated up front, because assumed scope is where this kind of work goes wrong for both sides.
Then the report says so, and it says why I believe that: which areas were checked, to what depth, and against what. A clean review from an independent engineer is worth having, particularly if a customer or an investor wants evidence that one happened.
In practice it is rare for a Standard review to return nothing at S2 or above. Where it does, the design is usually genuinely good and I can say which parts made it so.
Internal review is better than no review and it has one structural weakness: everyone involved shares the same assumptions, the same house style and often the same reference designs. The things nobody questions are exactly the things an outsider questions first.
It is also hard to be blunt with a colleague you will see at standup tomorrow. I have no such problem.
No, and the reason is not commercial. Once I have designed part of your board I can no longer independently review it, and independence is the entire product. I can point at the direction of a fix in a line or two, which is usually enough for a competent team.
I run a conflict check before the first call: whether you compete with my employer, whether I am reviewing a competing design on the same programme, whether I had any prior involvement in this design, and whether there is any financial interest. Any of those and I either decline or disclose in writing and let you decide.
I will not review competing designs on the same programme, for the duration of an engagement and for six months after. More detail on the about page.
Not currently. I am not set up with the facilities or clearances to handle controlled material, so let’s establish the classification before anything is shared. If it turns out to be controlled I will tell you at the scoping call rather than after you have sent me files.
Your position gets recorded against the finding in the register, alongside mine, and you can mark it accepted, waived with a named owner, or disputed. What does not happen is the finding disappearing because you would rather it wasn’t there.
If you produce information that shows I was wrong, I correct it openly and say what changed. That is the system working.
This runs alongside a full-time engineering role, so I quote the turnaround I can actually hit rather than the one you want to hear. That usually means starting within one to two weeks. If your date is immovable, say so on the call and I will tell you straight whether it is achievable.
Thirty minutes, no charge. I will tell you which review fits, what it costs, and whether it is worth buying at all.