Questions and answers

These are the questions we are most often asked about the model, with our answers. If your question is not covered here, please contact us.

Delivery and quality

What happens when projects fail?

Work is delivered in stages (increments), and each increment is planned to produce something usable, so a project that does not reach its full scope still leaves the client with working software. Agreeing the scope before work starts, client review of each increment, and taking on only problems with a clear boundary all reduce the risk of failure. You can stop after any increment and keep everything delivered so far.

If a project fails, we document what went wrong, return any unused budget and publish our findings.

How do you maintain quality when delivering in months?

Speed and quality both depend mainly on a clearly agreed scope and an experienced team. Long projects that deliver poorly often have an unclear scope, a team without the right skills, or too much management overhead. We keep project management light and do not reduce testing or review to save time.

Every deliverable includes automated tests, documentation written for the maintainer and a structured handover. Code is reviewed by a second experienced engineer. Where specific standards apply, such as clinical safety, accessibility or data protection, compliance is checked before handover.

Are the return on investment figures in your examples realistic?

The figures in the example projects are estimates based on comparable real cases and are not guaranteed. Every project scoping document includes a cost-benefit analysis that states its assumptions.

A system built by two people at cost plus 25 percent should cost considerably less than the same system built by a consultancy team of ten at commercial day rates, mainly because fewer people are involved.

Client capability

Can government departments own and maintain what you hand over?

They can, provided a named person on their side is responsible for the system. We help you hire or identify that person, and the documentation is written for them. Handover is the point at which that person can run the system day to day; our support continues after it. Moving most of the day-to-day support to your own staff takes from a few months to a few years, depending on the size of the system and your team. For larger clients we can help recruit and set up an internal team to run the whole system.

If scoping shows that the client has no technical staff and cannot easily recruit any, we agree with them how day-to-day running will be covered, for example by a new hire, by moving an existing member of staff into the role, or through a partnership with another organisation. We support the system in the meantime.

What if the client agrees to recruit a maintainer but then does not follow through?

The project agreement sets out the client’s commitment to identify a person responsible for the system, and the period within which they will do so. If that period passes and nobody is in place, we help with the recruitment and continue to support the system. We record what happens after each handover in our annual reporting, and change our handover process where the results show it is needed.

Competition and positioning

Why would government pay for this instead of hiring a commercial consultancy?

Commercial consultancies often keep the intellectual property, can charge five to ten times the underlying cost, and are often the only party able to change the system afterwards. We charge 125 percent of cost and hand over full ownership. We support the system for as long as the client needs us, and train their staff to handle more of that support themselves. For problems of the size we take on, we expect this to cost the client less.

Our projects are typically worth between ten thousand and a hundred thousand pounds. Firms such as Deloitte and Accenture bid for transformation programmes worth a hundred million pounds or more. Problems of our size are common in local government, health bodies and smaller government departments, and many are left unaddressed because they are too small to be profitable for large consultancies.

How are you different from the major innovation networks?

The major innovation networks focus on long-term, sector-specific research and development, typically in partnership with large industrial organisations and universities. The large innovation centres have annual budgets in the tens of millions and staff in the hundreds. Their projects typically run for several years and produce research, demonstration systems and industry partnerships.

Our projects are smaller and cost less. We take a defined problem and deliver working software, owned by the client, usually within six months.

What about university innovation centres and accelerators?

University enterprise centres exist to help academics and students turn research into commercial ventures. They support spin-outs, provide incubation space and connect founders with investors. They are not set up to take an external problem from a public sector body and deliver a working solution to a deadline.

Why not do this inside government, as another Government Digital Service?

The Government Digital Service has built good digital services inside government. In our view, it has found it difficult to keep that pace within government procurement rules and changing political priorities, and has come under pressure to run every service it built indefinitely. As an outside supplier, we can take on a defined problem, build the software and transfer ownership to the client.

You own the software we build, and we support it for as long as you need while training your staff, so that more of the day-to-day running can move in-house over time. We also arrange hosting, on our own servers, with a hosting partner or on your own servers; where we host a system, the hosting agreement sets out what we are responsible for.

Risk management

What are the key risks in Phase One and how are they addressed?

• Continuity. A small organisation depends heavily on a few people. At least two associates are named as deputies who can take over the management of active projects at short notice. Project documentation, client contacts and operating procedures are kept in a shared system that the deputies can access, and the directors hold appropriate personal insurance.
• Client pipeline. We identify and scope the first projects before applying for funding, so that work can start when the initial seed funding begins in January 2027. Projects we start ourselves in Phase One give prospective clients examples of our work.
• Funding timing. An initial seed of £15,000 to £50,000 covers January to April 2027. The main seed of £250,000 is intended to be in place from September 2027; this is a target and has not yet been secured. Phase One runs from existing premises, which reduces set-up costs, and the directors work part-time until the main seed is in place, so the plan can be adjusted if funding arrives later than expected.
• Project delivery. Because the scope is agreed first and work is delivered in increments that the client can stop after, each project should produce usable software even if its scope changes.

What work do you turn down?

• Work where the client is unwilling to commit to taking responsibility for the system after handover.
• Requests to take over the running of a client’s wider IT.
• Projects without a clearly agreed boundary.
• Work that would require us to hold sensitive data without an agreement in place that covers it.
• Projects whose compliance requirements we cannot yet meet. For example, we will not handle classified data without the appropriate clearance, or carry out clinical safety assessments without a qualified clinical safety officer.

Financial sustainability

Can a 125 percent pricing model sustain the organisation?

During Phase One the margin covers variable project costs and begins to build a reserve, but it does not cover the organisation’s fixed costs, which is why Phase One is paid for by seed funding. At Phase Two scale, £400,000 of project work billed at 125 percent gives £500,000 of revenue, and the £100,000 margin contributes towards fixed overheads. Full self-sufficiency at that margin needs roughly £2.2 million of billable work a year, which a team of seven can reach if a reasonable proportion of their time is billed to clients.

If experience shows that 125 percent is not enough, we will raise the margin. At 140 or 150 percent our prices would still be well below typical commercial rates.

What happens during gaps between projects?

Time between projects is spent improving our tools, documenting our methods, recruiting associates and finding new work. The cost of these gaps is covered by the reserve, and we keep several prospective projects in scoping at any time.

In Phase Two, with several projects running at once, gaps matter less because they are unlikely to affect the whole team at the same time. We track how much of each person’s time is billed, and recruit only when there is confirmed work.

What if seed funding is not available?

We prefer to start with seed funding because it pays for the directors’ time, so they can work on the company from the start and deliver the first projects sooner. Without it, we would start more slowly, with the directors doing this work alongside their existing consultancy work.

Governance and legal structure

What is the governance model?

Common Interest Computing is incorporated from day one as a Community Interest Company (CIC) limited by guarantee. This structure puts the company’s community purpose into its constitution, and the statutory asset lock prevents its assets being taken out for private benefit. Funders and public sector clients are familiar with the structure. Funders expect a legal company to sign project agreements, hold insurance and assign intellectual property, and CIC status helps with funding applications.

An independent advisory board will be set up in Phase Two, with representation from at least one public sector client, one academic partner and one independent technology professional.

Who scrutinises how grant money is spent?

Funders receive quarterly financial reports, annual accounts and a breakdown of costs for each project. Accounts are reviewed by an accountant in Phase One and independently audited from Phase Two onwards. Grant money is held in a separate bank account and is drawn only to pay for evidenced expenditure.

How is director compensation managed?

Director remuneration is disclosed in the annual CIC report as the CIC Regulator requires. Deliverables are defined in the grant agreement and have to be evidenced. From Phase Two the advisory board provides independent oversight and sets director pay.

Risks from artificial intelligence tools

What happens when the artificial intelligence (AI) tools you rely on change or become more expensive?

We are able to work with tools from several AI providers and with open-source alternatives, so we do not depend on a single supplier. Where practical, development work uses AI models running on our own hardware instead of online services. The systems we build for clients can use AI models from different providers, so they are not tied to one.

What if AI tools stop improving?

Our plans are based on the tools as they are now. With current agentic development tools (software that writes and tests code under an engineer’s direction), an experienced engineer can complete much of this work considerably faster than before. Further improvement would reduce our costs.

What about the emerging AI regulation?

We follow developments in AI regulation and design systems to meet the requirements we can foresee. For higher-risk uses, particularly in health, emergency services and decisions about individuals, we include human review of decisions, explanations of how the system reached a result, and testing for unfair bias, whether or not current law requires them. We expect much of this to become a legal requirement.

Practical challenges

How do you win public sector contracts without a procurement track record?

The directors’ existing contacts include people in local health bodies, local authorities and other potential clients, who can buy through small-value procurement routes that do not require framework membership. Phase One small builds are priced to fall within most public sector bodies’ small-value thresholds, typically under £25,000. We will apply to join the relevant procurement frameworks once we have enough trading history to qualify.

What about data protection during the build phase?

During development we normally use artificially generated, anonymised or sample data, not live personal data. Where access to real data is necessary, a Data Processing Agreement is put in place and the data is processed on the client’s own systems, or on ours with equivalent security controls. Personal data is never stored on personal devices, in cloud services without an appropriate Data Processing Agreement, or beyond the agreed project period.

Common Interest Computing is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a data controller and, where acting on behalf of clients, as a data processor. A standard Data Processing Agreement template is provided to every client.

How do you handle scope creep?

Scope is defined and agreed before work begins. Changes during a project need a change request, an updated cost estimate and your sign-off before any additional work happens. Because work is delivered in increments, you see working software at regular intervals and can change priorities within the agreed scope. Expanding the scope requires a new budget, and requests for additional features are scoped as separate projects.