The first two steps of any engagement cost nothing. If the answer is that your model is fine, or that the decision in front of you does not need a model, you will hear that instead of a proposal.
Email is the fastest route. Tell us what the asset is, what decision is pending, and roughly when it has to be made. You do not need to prepare anything or send data to have the first conversation.
Gillette, Wyoming, in the Powder River Basin. Work is remote by default and most engagements never need a visit, but the costing workshop is better in a room, and for an asset in this basin that is a drive rather than a trip.
Scoping call, forty-five minutes, no charge. What the asset is, what decision is pending, and whether we are the right people for it. We will say so if we are not.
A written scope, no charge. Fixed fee, fixed deliverable, a date, and the exact data request. You can take that document to somebody else and get it quoted, and we would rather you did than that you felt committed by a conversation.
Non-disclosure agreement, then data. Signed before the request goes out, not after. For a producing asset in the United States, about two thirds of what we need is public and we pull that ourselves first.
Build, fit and reconcile. We rebuild the asset from its own history and fit it to outturn, rather than adjusting the model you already have.
Workshop with the people who run the asset. Costs and odds on every opportunity come from the crew who would execute them, not from a spreadsheet assumption.
Report, model files and handover. You keep the model. Every assumption is one line in a text file, so next year's change is a difference rather than an excavation.
Nothing, until there is a signed scope and a non-disclosure agreement. When we do ask, the request is one page: monthly volumes with producing days and well count, monthly operating cost, capital authorisations and actuals, realised price, and one page of lease and fiscal terms. Two spreadsheet exports covers most of it.
The rest we collect ourselves from state regulators, mine safety filings, technical reports on comparable projects, and published price series.
The Asset Health Check is the cheapest possible way to find out whether we are worth the larger engagement. Two weeks, fixed fee, and a written answer either way.