Data Nexus
Express Audit
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Check · 30 minutes · 5 questions

“The whole project comes to AED 45,000, four to six weeks.”

Ask for these first

In writing, before the meeting. The request is half the check: everything below is one line to supply if it exists.

The basis: fixed price, time and materials, or capped
It decides who carries the risk of being wrong about the size. A fixed price with vague scope is not a fixed price, it is a fixed argument.
What is excluded, in writing
Content, migration of existing data, integrations with systems named later, third-party licences, hosting, the second round of changes. Each is routine and each is routinely outside the number.
The ownership position on day one
Whose name the registrar, repository, cloud and analytics accounts are in. It costs nothing to arrange at the start and is the whole of what leaving costs later.
The change rate and who may authorise a change
The cost of the work you have not thought of yet, which on every engagement is some of it.
01/The questions
  1. 01

    What would make this number wrong?

    A supplier who has estimated honestly can list the assumptions immediately, because they made them an hour ago. The list is more informative than the total.

    If instead“Nothing, it is fixed.” Either the scope is unusually tight, or the risk has been priced in silently and you are paying for a margin you cannot see.

  2. 02

    Compare the quotes on total cost, not on price.

    Build plus changes over the period plus the probability of a rebuild times what a rebuild costs plus the revenue lost while it does not work. The cheap quotation is only cheap if it is never redone.

    If insteadOne quote is a fraction of the others. That gap buys shortcuts, and they are predictable: accounts in the supplier's name, unlicensed components, no documentation, nobody able to continue.

  3. 03

    Which line items are one-off and which recur?

    Hosting, licences, support, the retainer that starts after launch. A first-year total is a different number from the quotation and is the one the business will actually feel.

    If insteadRecurring costs are discussed verbally and appear in no document.

  4. 04

    What happens if we stop after phase one?

    The answer reveals whether the phases are genuinely separable or whether phase one is unusable alone. It also tests the exit position before there is any tension in the relationship.

    If insteadPhase one has no standalone value. Then it is not a phase, it is an instalment, and the risk of the whole project sits in the first payment.

  5. 05

    Is the timeline dependent on us, and where?

    Content, approvals, access, decisions. Naming the dependencies converts a future argument about who was slow into a schedule both sides agreed to.

    If insteadThe plan assumes instant turnaround from the buyer and nobody has said so out loud.

02/What the answers mean
It is real
A stated basis, written exclusions, ownership settled at the start, a change rate, recurring costs separated, and a supplier who can list what would make the number wrong.
It is not
A single figure with no exclusions and no assumptions. It is not an estimate, it is an opening position, and the difference will be paid in change orders by the party with less leverage.
Cannot tell
The estimate is sound and the scope is genuinely uncertain. Buy the discovery separately and price the build after it. That is a smaller decision made with better information, and any supplier confident in their work will propose it themselves.
03/Where we failed it

Our own two productised offers

Express Site publishes its price on the page — AED 15,000, fixed scope, six weeks. Express Audit publishes none. A buyer comparing them can price one and must ask about the other, which is precisely the asymmetry this check tells them to push back on. The reason is real — an audit's cost varies with what is being audited — and it is a reason, not an exemption.

SinceNot yet. The honest form is a published basis rather than a published figure: what the price is computed from and what moves it, which is what we would require of anybody quoting us.

The words this uses
Vendor selection and total cost
Judging a supplier on what the work costs over its life — including the rebuild — rather than on the quotation.
Scope of work
What is being bought, written so that it can be finished — which means written backwards from the acceptance criteria rather than forwards from the wish.
Change order
The written record that scope moved and what it now costs — and in the UAE, the thing without which the extra work is not billable.
Acceptance criteria
The conditions that decide whether the work is finished — written before it starts, or they will be written afterwards to describe what arrived.
Vendor lock-in
What it would cost to leave — and it is a design property of the arrangement rather than a personality trait of the supplier.
Exit clause
What the contract says happens on the day the relationship ends — written while everyone is friendly, because it is unwritable afterwards.

Every checkThe whole glossary

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A supplier who cannot supply a base and a period has told you something, and it is not that they are disorganised. We do this for a living and the questions land differently when they come from outside.

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