Question 1

What is a Fractional AI Director?

Accepted Answer

Board-level AI leadership, without the full-time headcount. I work with your leadership team on strategy, governance, and implementation: the full scope of a Chief AI Officer, on a retained part-time basis. The difference from a consultancy is accountability. I stay responsible for what gets built, not just until the strategy document is finished. For most UK SMEs and councils, that costs 70-85% less than a permanent Chief AI Officer appointment.

Question 2

How much does a Fractional AI Director cost?

Accepted Answer

Retainers start at £3,500 per month, covering two to four hours of strategic advisory work, and go up to £8,500 per month for a full fractional engagement where I'm in your organisation 16 to 20 hours a month. Standalone project work is £1,750 per day with a two-day minimum, fixed scope and fixed fee. Every retainer is monthly rolling with a 30-day exit clause. There is no lock-in.

Question 3

What ROI can I expect from AI implementation?

Accepted Answer

That depends on your starting point, which is why every engagement begins with an audit rather than a promise. The Midlands council engagement delivered £780,000 in combined savings and recovered funding. Ninety days into a manufacturing SME engagement, operating costs were down 43%. The regional law firm freed 40% of senior fee-earner time and found £2.1M in new revenue through documents they already had. In each case the bottleneck was not the AI: it was data quality and governance problems that had been sitting there for years.

Question 4

Do you work with local councils and government organisations?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and public sector work is a significant part of the portfolio. The Midlands council case study is the most detailed example: £300,000 saved, £480,000 in additional funding identified, zero GDPR incidents. Council engagements are built to be procurement-compliant from day one. That means data protection impact assessments, PSED alignment, and FOI considerations are dealt with as part of delivery, not bolted on at sign-off.

Question 5

What makes AI-Si.com different from Big 4 consultancies?

Accepted Answer

The main difference is what happens after the strategy is written. Big 4 engagements typically conclude at that point, with junior consultants handling delivery. I stay through implementation personally, building working prototypes in your meetings rather than after them, managing the vendor relationship, and reporting outcomes to the board directly. Big 4 rates for that level of involvement start at £2,000 per day per consultant. My full fractional engagement starts at £8,500 per month.

Question 6

How do you ensure AI implementations are secure and compliant?

Accepted Answer

Every engagement starts with a data quality and governance audit before any AI tool is selected or deployed. That is not a compliance formality: it is where most implementations fail. Prompt injection testing and data minimisation are built into delivery from week one, not treated as a sign-off exercise. Simon Steggles has held data protection responsibility at board level. ISO 42001 alignment and vendor contract review for data training rights are included in every governance engagement.

Question 7

Can you help identify new funding opportunities through AI?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The Midlands council case study is the clearest example: £480,000 in additional grant funding the council was entitled to but had not been claiming, identified through AI-assisted analysis of the funding landscape. A West Midlands charity secured £220,000 in additional funding through the same approach. It works because AI can map a funding landscape in hours that would take a human analyst weeks, but only when the underlying data is in good enough shape to work with.

Question 8

Do you provide staff AI training?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The training is built around your actual workflows, not a generic AI literacy curriculum. Executives get a different session to operational teams, and I run a structured AI champion programme for the people who'll carry this forward inside the organisation. We cover prompt engineering, what your staff can and can't share with AI tools under UK GDPR, and how to identify and report problems. Staff are already using AI whether a policy exists or not. The training means that use is documented and under control.

Contact Simon Steggles, Fractional AI Director

Book a free 30-minute AI strategy call

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Questions about working with a Fractional AI Director

Contact Simon Steggles, Fractional AI Director

Book a free 30-minute AI strategy call

Booking calendar requires cookies

Send a Message

Questions about working with a Fractional AI Director

How much does a Fractional AI Director cost in the UK?

How quickly will you respond?

Do you work with public sector and councils?

What does the contract structure look like? Are you inside or outside IR35?

Can you sign an NDA before the initial call?

How do you handle our data during an engagement?

Do you work outside Birmingham?