Work with a Fractional Operations Director
Let's find out what's going wrong. Then I'll show you exactly how to fix it.
Start with the free Founder Bottleneck Scorecard below. It takes about 3 minutes, and it shows you where your business is quietly leaking time, money, and sanity.
Got your score? Here's how we'd fix it.
However rough that number was, none of it is unfixable. I've seen worse, I promise. Here's how we'd work together and what each part costs. No "Request a quote", no dance, no surprise invoice at the end of the month. Read it over. If it feels right, book a call.
Everyone starts the same way
A free 15-minute call. You tell me what's going wrong. I tell you honestly whether I'm the right person to fix it. If I'm not, I'll point you to someone who is. If I am, here's what comes next.
Step one: The Quick Scan - £1,500
One hour with you, two weeks with me. A plan you can use whether or not you ever speak to me again.
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You already know something isn't right. You could probably point at roughly where. What you've never had is someone with the time to sit down and work it out properly, because the person best placed to do that is you, and you're the reason it hasn't happened.
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So I do it instead.
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The hour
You and me, properly, on everything the 15 minutes was too short for. Where you're trying to get to. How the business actually runs day to day, rather than how the org chart says it does. What's driving you mad, and what you've already tried that didn't stick.
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I want whoever knows the most in that room. If that's you, brilliant. If it's you and your office manager, bring them.
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And bring one number if you can lay hands on it: the last decent-sized job you finished, what you quoted it at, and what it actually came in at. If there's a gap between those two, that's usually where your year is going.
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If I've got more questions afterwards I'll email them over. I won't book you into another meeting to ask them.
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The Fortnight
Then I go away and do the thinking you've not had time to do.Â
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What you get:
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A 60-minute deep-dive session with me
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3-5 quick wins - Things you can put in place yourself, starting the week you get them. No budget, no new software, no waiting on me.Â
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A written report - Whats actually going on underneath what you're seeing and what it's costing you whereever that can be worked out.
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A 90-day plan - what to fix first, second, third, and why in that order
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Then we get on a call and I walk you through the lot, so you can push back while I'm still in the room. I don't email you a document and wish you luck.
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All of it is yours to keep whether you carry on with me or not. Most of it you can do without me, and I'd honestly rather you did it than sat on it.
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If you want to carry on afterwards
The £1,500 you paid comes off every month for your first three months, on whichever tier you choose.
**The credit holds for 90 days from the day you get your report.Â
Two Ways to work together
Some people want me embedded in the business every month. Others just want one specific thing fixed. Both are totally fine!
Option One:Â
The Operations Project (one-off)
£4,500 - £12,000
Sometimes you don't need me every month. You just need one thing built properly and gone from your head.
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The ones I get asked for most:
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A quoting or fee model that reflects what the work actually costs. Built on your real delivered hours and current material prices, not on what you charged in 2023 plus a bit. Your team can run it without you standing over them.
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A scope change process. The single biggest recoverable sum in most of these businesses. Who spots it, who prices it, who tells the client, when it gets billed. Right now it's happening in someone's inbox and half of it never gets charged.
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Resource and utilisation planning. Who's on what, how loaded they actually are, and what you can safely say yes to next month. Ends the "we're flat out but not making money" problem.
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A billing and stage-draw calendar. So the money comes in when the contract says it should, rather than whenever someone remembers.
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Order-to-dispatch, or brief-to-delivery. The handover between the people who sell it and the people who make it, written down and working.
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Your PQQ and framework pack. Standing answers, accreditations, insurances, policies, case studies, in one place, so bidding for the bigger work stops being a three-day panic.
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Onboarding and SOPs. So a new starter isn't three days of shadowing and a disorganised drive, guessing at a process that only exists in your head.
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Two systems that finally talk to each other, so nobody's copying data between your CRM and your project tool.
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You don't get a template and a good luck. I build it with your data, I train your team on it, and I come back at 30 days to check it's still being used.
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Price: scoped to the job. Most land between £4,500 and £8,000. Bigger builds run to £12,000 and we cost it out together before anything starts, so you always know the number up front. Two rounds of revisions included.
Option TWO:Â
Fractional Operations Director (Ongoing)
from £1,800/month
I become your Operations Director. I own the parts of the business you've been holding in your head, and I hand them back to you as something that runs without you.
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Pick the level that fits.
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Eyes On — 2 days a month · £1,800/month
For firms under about £2m who need direction and discipline more than they need a body in the building.
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A monthly operations review with you. Two hours, agenda sent in advance.
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A numbers pack I build and own: margin by job, work in progress, money owed to you, work delivered but not yet billed, cash eight weeks forward.
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I sit in on one management meeting a month, as a contributor, not an observer.
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Email and WhatsApp between sessions, answered within a working day.
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Hands-On — 1 day a week · £4,000/month
The main one. For firms around £2m to £5m where the systems need building while the work keeps going out the door.
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I chair your weekly delivery meeting, and I set the agenda.
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I own the numbers pack, and it lands the same day every week. No exceptions.
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Supplier, equipment and software decisions get reviewed, negotiated and recommended by me.
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I sit between the people doing the work and the people running the office, and I make that handover work properly.
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One named improvement project running at a time, with a start date and a finish date.
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That last one matters more than it looks. It's the difference between an operations director and someone who spends every Tuesday on whatever caught fire on Monday.
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Locked In — 2 days a week · £6,500/month
For firms going through real change. An acquisition, a step up in contract size, a growth year, or a bad one.
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Everything in Hands-On, plus:
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Line management of your managers and office staff.
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Hiring: writing the role, sitting the interviews, running the onboarding.
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Supplier and subcontractor negotiation with agreed spend authority, written down.
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Two or three workstreams running at once instead of one.
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Need three days a week? That's £9,500/month. Rare at your size, but it exists and I'll tell you straight if I think you need it.
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Days are scheduled around what the work needs, not fixed to set weekdays.
*Minimum 3 months because real change doesn't happen in 3 weeks.Â
Founding Client Rate
I'm building my Aberdeen case studies right now, and I'd rather build them with two firms properly than ten firms badly.
The first two ongoing clients get £1,000/month for their first three months, on any tier, in exchange for a named case study, a reference call, and an honest testimonial at the end.
After six months, it goes to the list. And to be clear about what this is: it's a discount for proof, not a negotiation. When the two seats are gone, they're gone.
**The Founding Client Rate and the Quick Scan credit cannot be combined. ​
Who i'm for
I work with the firms construction depends on. Manufacturers and fabricators, architects, structural engineers, project managers, specialist suppliers, plant and waste. The businesses that sell into construction rather than the ones swinging the hammer. I know that world. I know what it does to a business when your biggest customer runs a programme that moves every fortnight and pays when it suits them. And I know that most firms in it are run by someone brilliant at the technical work who's quietly drowning in the operational side.
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Not one of those? Still worth a call. The work underneath is the same everywhere: find where the money and the time are leaking, build the system that stops it, train the people who'll run it after I've gone. I've done it in healthcare and professional services too. If you're running a growing firm and everything important still lives in your head, we should talk. The prices above are the prices.
What this replaces
A full-time operations director in Aberdeen is £70,000 to £100,000 on base salary. By the time you've added employer National Insurance at 15%, pension, benefits and a recruitment fee, year one lands somewhere between £100,000 and £170,000. Then it's three to six months before they're any use to you. UK fractional operations director day rates run £900 to £1,400. Two days a week on retainer benchmarks at £5,000 to £8,000 a month.
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I start at £4,000 for one day a week, because I take four clients, not ten.
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Source: UK Fractional Director Rate Report 2026, Leadership Services.