Engagement & Assurance
How we work, what we can prove, and how to buy it.
Before capability matters, most buyers need to answer a duller set of questions: who am I contracting with, are they cleared and insured, can they talk about their work, and how does this get through procurement. This page answers those.
Four ways to engage us.
The commercial shape follows the problem, not the other way round. Most relationships start at the smallest of these and grow only if the work justifies it.
Short scoped engagement
A session, a review, or a few focused days with a written output. Fixed scope agreed up front. See Micro-Consulting.
Fixed-price project
Defined deliverables, defined price, defined end. Suits a discrete piece of design, migration, or remediation with a clear finish line.
Retained or interim
Reserved capacity or a named technical authority across a programme. See Interim & Fractional Lead Architect.
Associate or subcontract
Delivery under your brand, with the client relationship staying yours. See Associate & White-Label Delivery.
Why our evidence has no client names on it.
Almost all of this work is covered by non-disclosure agreements, and a good deal of it sits in classified, OFFICIAL, or otherwise sensitive environments. So the engagements described across this site are anonymised deliberately: sector, scale, and shape, without the client’s name attached.
That cuts both ways, and it is worth being straight about it. It means we cannot decorate this site with logos or publish a case study with a customer’s numbers in it. It also means that when you engage us, your programme does not turn up in someone else’s marketing either. Named references can usually be arranged directly, under NDA, once a conversation is serious.
Who you are contracting with.
- Unicorn Consultants Limited, registered in England and Wales.
- Company registration number 10901347.
- VAT registered, number 281654488.
- Registered office in Bolton; delivery UK-wide, remote and on site.
- SC security clearance, current and transferable.
- Professional indemnity: £5m any one claim, defence costs in addition.
- Public and products liability: £5m. Employers’ liability: £10m.
- Delivery experience in IL3, OFFICIAL, NHS, and NATO-classified environments.
- 25+ years of contract and consulting delivery.
Getting this through procurement.
We are a small, independent consultancy, which makes us straightforward to buy from and easy to start quickly. There are three routes that work, and the right one usually depends on the size of the engagement rather than the sector.
Direct engagement
Standard B2B terms, purchase order and invoice. For most private-sector work, and for public-sector work inside delegated authority thresholds, this is the shortest route and needs nothing else.
Through your incumbent
Where you already have a systems integrator or managed service provider on contract, we can be engaged as a named specialist beneath them, using commercial cover that is already in place.
Framework call-off
Where a call-off is required, we work as a named subcontractor to a framework holder. Tell us which framework you are buying through and we will confirm the route before you spend time on it.
IR35 and status determination
Engagements are scoped and worked so they sit outside IR35 wherever the working practices genuinely support it: defined deliverables, our own equipment and methods, no line management, and substitution preserved where the engagement allows.
The determination itself is the client’s to make, not ours. For public sector bodies and medium or large private sector clients, you issue the Status Determination Statement, and we will give you whatever detail your assessment needs to reach it properly. If an engagement genuinely falls inside, we would rather establish that at the scoping stage than argue about it later.
Insurance certificates, clearance confirmation, and company documentation are available on request.
Ask the awkward questions early.
Clearance, insurance, references, commercial route — all of it is easier to settle in the first conversation than in week three. Bring the questions.