How we work
Falkovia engagements are designed around a single principle: the architecture must hold and your leadership team must own it. Fixed scope. Confidential. Designed to end.
Three principles every engagement is structured around
Fixed scope
Every engagement begins with a confidential scoping conversation that defines the question, the deliverables, the timeline, and the investment. No open-ended consulting hours. No scope creep. The work is scoped to what your organization actually needs, not extended to fill billable time.
Confidential
Every engagement is fully confidential. Falkovia does not publish client names, case studies, or institutional details without explicit written permission. The work product is yours. The relationship is private. Many institutional clients require this and it is standard practice.
Designed to end
The engagement ends when your leadership team owns the architecture and can defend it under scrutiny. No retainer required. No dependency by design. When your team can answer every question a board, regulator, accreditor, or LP asks, the work is done.
What your leadership team commits
Architecture engagements require institutional authority and leadership engagement. Engagements that start below the executive level rarely produce architecture that holds.
Executive sponsorship
A named executive sponsor with the authority to make governance decisions. Typically the CEO, President, COO, Provost, or General Counsel. The engagement does not work without sponsorship at this level.
Leadership time
Roughly two to four hours per week from the leadership team during the engagement. Targeted interviews, working sessions, and review checkpoints. The cadence is structured around your operations, not against them.
Access to current state
Honest access to the institution's current AI footprint, vendor relationships, governance documentation, and operating realities. The architecture cannot be designed against a sanitized picture of what is actually happening.
Decision authority
Pre-authorized authority to convene the cross-functional voices needed to design and adopt the architecture. Compliance, legal, IT, clinical or academic leadership, and board liaisons as relevant.
The 12-Week Architecture Engagement
Most engagements follow the same four-phase structure, calibrated to your sector and institutional context. Fractional Chief AI Officer, Board Advisory, and Investment Due Diligence engagements compress or extend this depending on scope.
Diagnose
Comprehensive governance diagnostic. Shadow AI Audit. Stakeholder interviews across executive leadership, clinical or academic operations, compliance, IT, and board liaisons. Regulatory and accreditation exposure mapping. AI Governance Maturity Scorecard™ scored across the five G.U.A.R.D.™ dimensions.
Output: Complete picture of where AI is being used, who approved it, where governance gaps create institutional risk, and your maturity baseline.
Design
Decision authority mapping across all institutional domains. Human Authority Line™ drawn for each high-risk AI workflow. Override and escalation protocol architecture. Board oversight structure. First 90 Minutes Incident Response Protocol drafted.
Output: Governance architecture blueprint your leadership team reviews, challenges, and refines before it is documented and committed.
Build
Full documentation of governance infrastructure. Policy drafting. Role and accountability assignments. Board charter and reporting frameworks. Regulatory and accreditation alignment documentation. Sector-specific calibration to your accreditor, your regulatory environment, and your vendor relationships.
Output: Complete, documented governance infrastructure ready for leadership adoption.
Deliver
Leadership team walkthrough and adoption. Board presentation preparation. Implementation roadmap with named owners, milestones, and accountability assignments. Transition to internal ownership with a documented governance operating model.
Output: Governance infrastructure your leadership team owns, operates, and can defend under scrutiny.
What Falkovia does not do
Clarity about what is not included is part of the working agreement. Falkovia does not:
- •Sell, recommend, or implement AI tools, platforms, or vendor technology
- •Replace your General Counsel, CIO, CMIO, compliance team, or existing advisors
- •Provide ongoing managed services or operational AI oversight beyond the Fractional Chief AI Officer engagement
- •Publish client names, case studies, or institutional details without explicit written permission
- •Extend engagements beyond their scoped deliverable through retainer dependency
Strong advisory ecosystems are an asset. Falkovia is designed to fit inside them, not around them.
Investment and pricing model
Architecture and advisory engagements are fixed-scope. Investment is structured to institutional size, complexity, current AI exposure, and the regulatory environment your engagement must hold against. The Intelligence Layer is an ongoing monthly retainer scoped to your strategic advising needs.
The Intelligence Layer
Ongoing monthly retainer for executive AI advisory. A trusted partner who keeps your leadership team current on the AI landscape, sharpens your read on what it means for your institution, and prepares you for board, regulator, and accreditor conversations. Scoped to your cadence. The entry point most leaders take first.
Architecture Engagement
Fixed-scope twelve-week engagement that produces complete governance infrastructure. Investment scoped to institutional size and complexity.
Fractional Chief AI Officer
Monthly retainer with a six-month minimum. Named executive authority in the governance seat for institutions that need senior AI oversight without a full-time CAIO hire.
Board and Executive Advisory
Fixed-scope initial engagement, typically six to eight weeks. Quarterly advisory available on retainer if board cadence calls for it.
Investment Due Diligence
Fixed-scope, scoped to deal complexity and IC timeline. Post-acquisition portfolio governance priced separately.
Every engagement begins with a confidential scoping conversation. There is no standardized pricing because no two institutions have the same governance landscape, and no IC has the same deal complexity. The conversation is the first step.
How an engagement ends
Every engagement is structured to end. The closing weeks include leadership walkthrough, board presentation preparation, and full transition of the architecture to your internal team. The deliverable is yours. The frameworks, the documentation, the language, and the operating model are yours.
Some clients continue with a Fractional Chief AI Officer engagement to maintain governance as AI scales and regulatory expectations evolve. Some return for Board Advisory at high-stakes moments. Most do not need to. That is the design.
Frequently Asked Questions
Typically two to four weeks. The first conversation is a confidential scoping call to assess fit. If both parties want to proceed, a formal scoping conversation defines the question, the deliverables, the timeline, and the investment. The engagement begins once the scoping document is signed and the leadership sponsor is named.
Confidentiality is structured around the institution, not individuals. The sponsor and the leadership team participate fully. Other stakeholders are read in to the engagement only at the level needed for their contribution. All engagement materials, including the governance architecture itself, remain proprietary to the client institution.
Yes, within scope. The engagement is structured to be responsive to the institution's real operating conditions. A meaningful change in scope is handled through a written amendment. The engagement is not designed to renegotiate every week, which is what protects the deliverable timeline.
Yes, with sector calibration. Engagements outside the United States anchor against the regulatory frameworks that apply, including the EU AI Act for European institutions and partnerships. The methodology travels. The calibration adjusts.
Many institutions start with the Intelligence Layer, an ongoing monthly retainer that keeps executive leadership current on the AI landscape, sharpens the read on what it means for the institution, and prepares the leadership team for board and regulator conversations. It is an entry point that does not require a full architecture build.
Due Diligence engagements are scoped to IC timelines, typically four to six weeks. Pre-Exit Forensic Governance Reviews are scoped to exit timelines, typically twelve to twenty-four months pre-transaction. Both are confidential, fixed-scope, and produce documented deliverables built for the diligence and exit conversation.
Next Step
The first conversation is confidential.
Every engagement begins with a thirty-minute scoping conversation about what your institution actually needs.
Start a Confidential Conversation