A clear, honest version of how we work, what we cost, and when we're not the right fit.
AI synthesises information faster than any analyst, and we use it every day. What it can't do is tell you the vendor's energy figures are optimistic because the assumed duty cycle doesn't match how your operation runs, or that a flowsheet has a failure mode that never made it into a published paper. That judgement comes from having been inside enough of these decisions to know where the numbers get gamed. We use AI to work faster, not to replace the pattern recognition that only comes from experience.
Yes, and we'd be slower and more expensive without it. AI handles literature synthesis, draft structuring and sense-checking at a speed no human team can match. But the model assumptions, the screening criteria and the interpretation of what the output means for your decision stay with us. The risk with AI in technical advisory isn't that it's obviously wrong, it's that it's plausibly wrong, and you need domain experience to catch the difference.
By default our models are built in Excel and Python so you can trace every formula, interrogate every assumption, and keep and run the model yourself at the end of the engagement, rather than depend on a proprietary platform you can't open, audit or maintain. What stays with us is the underlying methodology and calibration that power it. If you'd rather we build and run a managed tool for you, we can. The point is that it's your choice, not a dependency we impose.
Large firms absolutely have their place in the market, and for certain programs they're the right fit. HIC's point of difference is our model. From the very beginning of an engagement through to delivery, the work is driven by the core team, who will build your solution. The person who scopes your project is the same person who builds the model and sits alongside your engineers, ensuring the senior expertise you invest in is the expertise doing the work. That's a deliberate design choice in how we deliver, not a constraint of scale.
Then we'll tell you. We'd rather decline an engagement than staff it with people who lack the depth to do it well. If we're not right for your timeline or your problem, we'll say so and point you somewhere that can meet your needs. We've all been on the buyer's side and know what it's like to be oversold. Our business runs on referrals and repeat work, so honesty and trust are the whole model.
It depends on the engagement, and we're open about that. Some work suits a fixed-fee scope with a clear deliverable and a defined endpoint. For longer engagements where the value is a better capital decision, we're open to structures tied to outcomes and decision milestones rather than hours. We're not wedded to the hourly model, partly because it doesn't align our interests with yours.
Then that's what we'll tell you, and we'll show our working. An engagement that saves you from committing capital to a flawed project is a success, not a failure. We price and structure our work so that conclusion is always available to you. An advisor who needs the project to proceed to justify their fee can't give you that answer credibly, whatever they find.
Our most visible work is heavy-haul rail decarbonisation, because that's where the track record is most public: named clients, hardware in build, peer-reviewed papers. But the method is the same wherever a capital-intensive technology choice is made under uncertainty: minerals processing, mine-fleet decarbonisation, early-stage project evaluation. If your problem has complex variables, a long horizon and serious capital at stake, the approach travels. Get in touch and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Our size makes us agile. With no resourcing committees, conflict checks or proposal-governance processes between the conversation and the work starting, a screening study can typically be scoped and underway within days of a discussion. The deep modelling takes longer by necessity (the rigour is the point), but we'll tell you the timeline up front and we won't pad it.
We've spent the early part of our careers inside organisations like yours, so we know what it feels like to be on that side of the table. We're not here to show anyone up; we're here to give your people better tools to make the case they're already trying to make.