When you outsource a function you depend on, the deal drifts over the years — you pay more, get less, or both, while the contract still looks fine on paper.
We're the independent commercial check on what you're really getting for what you pay.
For the COO or GM of an operation that runs on one or more large outsourced providers — across mining, utilities, rail, energy and infrastructure. The multi-year contracts you depend on: haulage, processing, maintenance, facilities, and similar.
When a contractor runs a function your operation depends on — haulage, processing, maintenance, facilities — your output and your numbers are pinned to their performance. Over time, the arrangement drifts. And drift comes in two forms.
Rates hold or creep up a few per cent, but what you actually get for what you pay — cost per unit of output — moves the wrong way. Often it's volume, not price: the contract quietly pays for more and more units to do exactly the same job. The contract stays compliant the whole time; on paper, nothing is wrong.
And you don't see it: no one is watching cost per unit of output, so it hides in the noise of monthly reports — some lines up, some down — that were never set up to flag the trend.
The deal still performs as signed, but the reason you outsourced has gone. Most outsourcing of a depended-on function is decided for a moment — a capability you didn't have yet, capital you wanted to preserve, a proven operator you needed to get the project funded. Years on, those reasons soften, but the arrangement rolls on, unexamined.
Either way, by the time it reaches the board, the honest answer to "what's driving this?" is usually "we can't easily tell."
Underneath both is one root cause: the deal was designed for a perfect operating environment that never arrives. So when it goes wrong, blaming the supplier or re-tendering just resets the same flawed design with a new logo or a new rate. The first step is recognising the design itself is the problem.
There's a third, quieter source too: under pressure, both sides can drift from what was agreed — and the contractor usually gets the blame. More on that under commercial drift
The cost was volume, not price — and neither re-tendering nor switching suppliers had touched it. Reconciled to the P&L, so it's defensible with the CFO and the board.
A mining client; not named.
The commercial outcome of a contract, over its life, sits in a gap:
Whether the deal still delivers what you paid for is the one question no role actually owns — so it slips.
And the people closest to the contract are the last ones placed to call it: it's their contract, and the day job doesn't leave room to step back. That's why this is a periodic, independent check — not another permanent seat.
We're rarely the first call on a quiet day. Operations leaders bring us in at one of three moments — and the earlier it is, the more room there is to fix it.
There's a cost-out number to find, and a large contract is the obvious place to look — but you want to know what's really there before you touch it.
Cost, output, or the relationship has gone sideways enough to cause real pain — and re-tendering feels like a blunt instrument that won't fix the cause.
You're establishing or re-tendering an arrangement, and you don't want to rebuild the same problems the last one had.
Do I need to do anything about this yet? A fixed-scope look at one contract: is it drifting, by how much, and is it worth acting on.
Get a drifting contract back on track, without re-tendering everything.
Reset the commercial model properly when the deal can't be nudged back.
We give you the advice and the numbers; you and your teams act on them. Periodic, fixed-scope, and never another headcount on the opex line.
Neither a legal review nor a technical one tells you whether the deal still delivers. We sit across all three:
The process, and what was negotiated and conceded.
The business case it was meant to deliver.
The operating realities that make it work or fail.
We've watched the same pattern repeat for twenty years — across many large outsourcing agreements, within industries and across them. That's how we see the gap a single-discipline view misses — and we reconcile it to your P&L. We work alongside your procurement, legal and contract teams, not instead of them.
Pick the arrangement you're least sure about. We'll scope a fixed-price diagnostic and tell you whether it's drifting — and what it's worth doing about it.