Automation and AI adoption for modern IT infrastructure
The question every organization faces when the future arrives faster than the plan. I help you answer it.
One hour, no pitch deck, no obligation. You tell me how your organization runs: the systems, the subscriptions, the things that break, the things you're renting that you could own. I'll tell you plainly what I'd look at first, and whether I'm the right person to help. You should come away with insight either way.
Most engagements begin with an Infrastructure & AI Readiness Assessment. Fixed scope, fixed price, scaled to your organization: three working days for a small office, up to two weeks for a large one. Scope and price are both set in that first session. How the assessment works
Every system and subscription accounted for: what to fix, what to replace, what to own outright. Your operation mapped by zone and stability tier, so it's clear where automation and AI genuinely fit and where they don't belong yet.
Findings, risks, and a sequenced plan with what to build, what to integrate, and in what order. Written to be read by your leadership, then acted on or audited later.
From there: modernization work, custom builds, or ongoing leadership. Whatever the plan actually calls for, and nothing it doesn't.
Book your discovery sessionRates
| Engagement | Rate | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure consulting & coaching | $400/hr | Infrastructure review, modernization planning, AI-adoption advisory for your leadership team. |
| Custom platforms, tools & integrations | $300/hr | Development and integration, including self-hosted systems that replace subscription spend and keep your data local and private. Built under governance: audit trail and approval gates included. |
| Fractional IT/infrastructure leadership | Contracted monthly | Ongoing senior leadership for organizations without senior IT. |
| Fixed-price projects | By contract | Scoped and priced up front. |
Tools built with intention.
I don't ask anyone to take claims on faith. Everything I advise on, I've built and operated myself. The systems below are the infrastructure my own work runs on.
A cloud platform for containerised AI dev workspaces, live at pychisel.com. Designed, built, and operated by one person. Describe what you want; the environment handles setup, tooling, and deployment. This site was built and is hosted on it.
Open page →When I needed to keep my own AI agents enforceably in-bounds, I wrote the standard myself: an open standard for agent governance with runtime enforcement, with zones, approval gates, and audit trails. GNDCTRL · Apache-2.0, pre-release, with a production reference deployment.
Open page →Client-ready field photo sharing your organization hosts itself. Scoped access for clients and stakeholders, no per-seat subscription, your photos on your infrastructure. Reference deployment in place, with an install playbook and operations runbook. The kind of platform I build for clients: owned, not rented.
Open page →Also in the workshop · products at various stages, all built the same way:
"I got tired of subscription fatigue, so I started building alternatives and took back control of my data."
I've spent twenty-five years leading IT and infrastructure in British Columbia, as the person responsible when systems failed, budgets ballooned, or a vendor's promises didn't survive contact with production. I've watched good organizations rent software they should own, pay per-seat for tools that have nothing to do with the cost of building them, and get pitched AI by people who have never run a production system.
So I build the alternatives. I designed and operate my own cloud platform (pyChisel, the platform this site lives on). I authored an open governance standard to keep automated agents enforceably in-bounds (GNDCTRL: Apache-2.0, pre-release, with a production reference deployment). And I ship client-ready self-hosted systems like Prism. Everything I recommend to a client, I've already run myself.
That's the work: infrastructure consulting and development for organizations that want systems they own, modernization that sticks, and automation and AI adopted where they genuinely fit. I speak boardroom and terminal. It starts with a free discovery session. One hour, no obligation.
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