Application Condition Assessment
Your system does not need replacing. It needs a few more years.
We do one thing: we tell you how much working life is left in a system you cannot afford to replace, and what it would take to add more.
An assessment is $6,500 to $14,500, fixed before we start. Remediation, if you want it, is quoted as a ceiling that cannot move upward.
The situation this is built for
There is no money for a replacement, and there was never going to be.
Most public bodies are running at least one system that everyone quietly works around. It still does the job. The people who understood it best have moved on. Nobody can say what it would cost to put right, so it stays on the list and off the budget.
The licence has lapsed, or renewing it costs more than the system is worth, or the vendor was acquired and the product you actually run is three versions behind anything they will support. Sometimes there is no licence to renew because the company is gone. Meanwhile the replacement everyone keeps recommending is a capital project: a business case, a competitive process, a year of staff time, and a number with six digits in it.
So nothing happens. The system keeps running, the workarounds keep accumulating, and the risk keeps getting quietly absorbed by two or three people who know where the bodies are buried. That is not negligence. It is the normal condition of municipal software, and it is exactly the situation worth measuring before something forces the question for you.
The cheapest system you will ever operate is usually the one you already own, maintained properly.
Step one — the assessment
A written report you can forward upward without editing it.
That is the design constraint. It has to survive being read by your boss, and by a councillor who was not in the room.
What the system is
Plain language, one page, no jargon. Proves we understood it before we had opinions about it.
Condition summary
A small number of ratings across defined dimensions, so it can be skimmed in thirty seconds.
Genuinely risky vs merely ugly
Most legacy systems are full of things that look alarming and do not matter, and one or two things that look fine and will take you down. Separating those is the work.
Failure modes, named and ranked
What breaks, under what conditions, with what consequence for service delivery.
What it costs to fix
Prioritised and honest, including leave this alone where that is the right answer.
A priced remediation menu
Discrete, scoped, individually priced items, each weighed against the working life it is likely to buy. The report ends with the next decision already made simple.
Where the honest answer is that a system should be replaced rather than repaired, the report says that, and prices that too.
What it costs
Every number on this page is a number you can put in a report.
Assessment — fixed price
- Small
- $6,500
- 1–2 weeks
- One system, few integrations, largely as the vendor shipped it.
- Standard
- $9,750
- 2–3 weeks
- One system that has been customised over the years and now carries local knowledge nobody wrote down.
- Large
- $14,500
- 3–4 weeks
- Many integrations, or heavily modified, or the original vendor is gone and nobody has the source.
Extension — priced as a ceiling
These are not estimates. They are the most you can be charged. The exact scope comes out of the assessment, so the final figure may land below the ceiling for your tier. It can come in less. It never comes in more.
- Small system
- $18,000
- Ceiling
- Contained system, a clear list of defects, no dependency that has to be replaced outright.
- Standard
- $38,000
- Ceiling
- Several linked problems across one system, including at least one that has to be solved before the others can be.
- Large, heavily patched
- $65,000
- Ceiling
- Years of accumulated workarounds, undocumented changes, and integrations that were never meant to carry this much.
The assessment fee is credited against the extension if you proceed within 90 days of receiving the report. It is priced to be an easy first decision, not a revenue line.
Support afterwards — optional
No retainer and no monthly fee. If you would rather the extended system did not go straight back to having nobody who knows it, keep us on: each piece of work is quoted in writing as its own fixed price before it starts and triaged by severity. Critical means now; cosmetic waits for the next available week. Optional, and never a condition of the work above.
How the engagement runs
Three weeks, and then it stops.
There is no discovery phase that turns into another discovery phase. The end date is in the agreement.
- 2–3 wks
- Typical duration
- Read-only
- Nothing changes
- Fixed
- Price before we start
Week 0
Scope and fixed price
We agree which single system is in scope and which tier it falls in. The price is fixed at this point and does not move afterwards.
Week 1
Read-only access and interviews
Read access to the system and its data, whatever documentation survives, and time with the two or three people who actually keep it running.
Week 2
Analysis
No demands on your staff. This is the part you are paying for and the part you do not have to be present for.
Week 3
Draft, then final
You see a draft first and get to correct anything we misunderstood about your operation. The final report follows, and the engagement ends.
What we need from you
- Read access to the system in your environment, or a copy of it in an environment you control. Any copy is deleted at the end of the engagement and the deletion confirmed in writing.
- Roughly four hours of one knowledgeable person's time across the whole engagement.
- Whatever documentation exists, however out of date. Nothing is too messy to be useful.
- A named contact who can answer a question inside a day or two.
What we do not need
Write access. A staging environment built for us. Your team stopping what they are doing. A steering committee. A workshop. The assessment is designed to sit alongside your operation rather than interrupt it, which is the reason it can be priced before it starts.
How to buy it
The part your procurement people will ask about.
It is a service, not a capital project
An assessment is an operating expense small enough to fit a budget a director already controls, not a business-case purchase. Check your own threshold — it is set by your bylaw or policy, not by us — and buy it whichever way that policy requires.
We invoice against a purchase order
Standard net 30. One invoice on delivery of the report for the assessment; remediation is milestone-billed against the agreed ceiling.
Insurance and registrations are already on file
$5M commercial general liability, $2M professional liability, $2M cyber, all bound. WorkSafeBC active. Certificates and a clearance letter go out the same day you ask.
You own the output
The report, and anything built during a remediation, is yours. No licence, no renewal, and no clause that lets us reprice you later.
If your file needs something we have not listed — a specific insurance endorsement, a security questionnaire, a vendor form — ask for it in the first email and you will get it back the same day or a straight answer that we cannot meet it.
What we will not do
The list matters more than the brochure.
- Sell you a replacement. If the report concludes the system should be replaced, it says so and prices that too; we do not then pitch the rebuild.
- Produce a ten-year digital strategy. You did not ask what technology will look like in 2035. You asked whether this thing will make it to 2029.
- Touch anything during the assessment. Read-only means read-only.
- Quote you a number that can go up later.
Who is doing the work
Checkable, not claimed.
OAG-RFQ-26-068
Runs to 2030-07-07
Pre-qualified supplier to the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia
Digital Services. Qualified in three categories: Public Cloud Services, Application and System Design, and AI Readiness and Adoption.
ON-003317-03
Pre-qualified, Province of British Columbia Multi-Use List, Service Area 3
Software Development and Testing. The provincial standing list ministries draw from when they scope a build.
BC Digital Marketplace
Registered supplier
Listed on the province’s marketplace for digital opportunities, so BC public bodies can find and invite us directly.
Delivery in progress
We hold an active contract with a Canadian provincial government ministry, client name withheld under contract confidentiality.
To be exact about what the first three are: a pre-qualification is permission to be invited, not a contract award and not a guarantee of work. It means the province has already reviewed us against its criteria and cleared us to bid. What it gives a ministry is permission to invite us to a limited competition, not a shortcut past one.
- Commercial general liability
- $5,000,000
- Professional liability (E&O)
- $2,000,000
- Cyber liability
- $2,000,000
- WorkSafeBC account
- 201966367
Bound and in force.
Bound and in force.
Bound and in force.
Active. Clearance letter on request.
- Federal corporation (CBCA)
- 1730441-2
- BC extraprovincial registration
- A0142791
- Business number
- 771523834 RC0001
- Ownership
- Canadian
BlueStone AI Inc. Searchable on the Corporations Canada registry.
Registered to carry on business in British Columbia.
Canada Revenue Agency.
Canadian-owned small business.
Certificates of insurance and a WorkSafeBC clearance letter are issued on request, usually the same day.
A pre-qualification is permission to be invited, not a contract award, and we will not describe it as anything more than that.
The full public-sector recordQuestions you will be asked
Answered the way we would answer them in the room.
How many years will this buy us?
We will not put a number on that before we have looked, and we would be suspicious of anyone who does. What the assessment produces is a priced list of discrete fixes, each one weighed against the working life it is likely to buy. Some systems turn out to have a long runway and a short list of cheap problems. Some turn out to be genuinely at the end, and the report says so in writing rather than selling you work that will not help.
What does read-only actually mean?
No code changes, no data migration, no retraining, no configuration changes, and nothing about how the system runs changes while the assessment is underway. Your staff keep working through it. The engagement cannot break your operation because it does not touch it, which is the point: it is the smallest first purchase that still produces something real.
Why is the remediation price a ceiling instead of a quote?
Because a ceiling is the harder commitment, not the softer one. An estimate can move upward and usually does. A ceiling cannot. If the work comes in under the ceiling, you are invoiced for what it actually took. If it turns out to be larger than the ceiling, that is our problem, not a change order.
Does the assessment fee come off the remediation?
Yes. If you proceed within 90 days of receiving the report, the full assessment fee is credited against the extension. The assessment is priced to be an easy first decision, not a revenue line.
Can we buy this without running a competition?
That depends on your own purchasing bylaw, not on us, and you should check the threshold before you rely on it. What we can say is that the assessment is a small, read-only, fixed-price piece of work that comes out of an operating line rather than a capital request. Whether your policy treats that as a direct purchase, a quote process or a competition is for your procurement office to decide, and we will follow whichever route it sets.
Have you done this for a government before?
We hold an active contract with a Canadian provincial government ministry, client name withheld under contract confidentiality. We can speak to scope and approach in a procurement conversation, but we will not name a client on a website, which is the same discretion your file would get.
Which security certifications do you hold?
CyberSecure Canada certification is in progress. The assessment itself is read-only: we review the system without changing it, under whatever access arrangement your security team sets. $2,000,000 in cyber liability and $2,000,000 in professional liability are in force. The full certification position is on our government page.
What happens after the extension work is done?
Nothing, unless you want it to. There is no licence, no renewal, no retainer, and no clause that lets us reprice you later. If you would rather not go back to having nobody who knows the system, you can keep us on: each piece of work is quoted in writing as its own fixed price before it starts and triaged by severity, so a critical issue is handled immediately and a cosmetic one waits for the next available week. It is optional, and there is never a monthly fee for existing.
Next step
Name the system that worries you most.
Tell us which system it is and roughly how old it is, and you get a written answer within one business day on whether an assessment would tell you anything you do not already know. If it would not, we will say so, and it will have cost you one email.
Email us directlyOpens your own mail client with the subject already filled in — or use the form, whichever leaves the record you want.
- Reply window
- One business day, in writing
- Who answers
- The person who would do the work
- Cost to ask
- Nothing, and no call required
Tell us which system it is.
Name it, say roughly how old it is and what everyone works around, and you will get a straight read back on whether it is worth assessing. If a letter from us is what brought you here, say so — it tells us which one reached you.