---
title: How I work
source: https://rubradigital.com/approach
site: Rubra Digital
description: The five phases of an engagement, from scoping call through to handover.
---

# How I work

**Summary:** The five phases of an engagement, from scoping call through to handover.

## Phase 0. A 30-minute call (free)

You describe the problem. You get an honest read on whether it works, roughly what it costs, and whether this is the right fit.

## Phase 1. Discovery (3 to 5 weeks)

Interviews, a hard look at your actual documents, and feasibility probes against the riskiest assumptions. The output includes an explicit list of what not to build.

## Phase 2. Evaluation first (weeks 1 to 2 of the build)

Before any retrieval code, the labelled evaluation set gets built with your subject-matter experts: 150 to 300 questions with known-correct passages.

## Phase 3. Build (8 to 14 weeks)

Ingestion, retrieval tuning as measured experiments, generation with citations and refusal behaviour, permissions enforced at retrieval, and observability from the first commit.

## Phase 4. Handover (final 2 weeks)

Working sessions with your engineers, a runbook covering the failure modes actually found, and a prioritised list of what to do next.

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Rubra Digital. Independent LLM and RAG consulting for regulated and document-heavy organisations in Europe and North America.
Contact: hello@rubradigital.com · https://rubradigital.com/contact