This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in the public sector, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
Unit cost of a service varying substantially between neighboring areas with similar demand, unexamined because the comparison is nobody's job.
Fees and charges set historically and never uprated to cost recovery, subsidizing users at the expense of the general fund.
Direct awards and off-framework procurement accumulating without aggregate visibility.
Property portfolio holding cost carried by services that do not see it and cannot act on it.
Demand management effort concentrated at the point of crisis rather than upstream, where it is cheaper.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation7 requests written for the public sector, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery service in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
2 core requests written for the public sector, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Budget against outturn by service — With virements and their reasons.
Statutory versus discretionary spend — By service area.
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
A forecast overspend reported quarterly that grows at each report
A Single Audit finding, a material weakness, or a repeat finding from last year
A fund balance that has fallen through the reserve policy the covenants assume
A federal grant approaching its period of performance deadline with the money unspent
An ERP or case management replacement, which surfaces every local workaround
A bond rating review, or a shared services and cost allocation review where the basis is examined for the first time since it was set
Who needs to be in the room
Signs it: The finance director or CFO, with the city or county manager
Will resist it: Department heads, whose unit costs become comparable with neighboring jurisdictions' — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: Budget analysts, who have been writing the exception reports
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.