Pipeline architecture review · Howe Street
Our service catalogue covers the full raw-to-refined cycle: strategy and governance, pipeline engineering, warehouse platforms, analytics tooling, retrieval foundations for large language models (LLMs) and ongoing DataOps. Indicative CAD ranges below are starting bands — final quotes follow discovery.
No. 01
Data Strategy, Discovery & Governance
Before anyone writes SQL, we map what your organization actually needs from its data — stakeholder interviews, source-system inventory, gap analysis and a written roadmap with prioritized milestones. We define data contracts, ownership boundaries and PIPEDA-aligned handling for Canadian client data. Discovery sprints surface where folklore lives in spreadsheets and which metrics leadership quotes without evidence. Governance guardrails include access tiers, retention policies and responsible-AI principles for downstream machine learning or generative AI use. You leave with a scope document your finance and engineering leads can both sign — not a slide deck that evaporates after the kickoff meeting.
Indicative project range: C$18,000–C$38,000 · Retainer from C$5,500/month
No. 02
Data Engineering & Pipelines (batch + streaming)
We build the ingest and transform layers that move data from operational systems into governed storage — batch jobs for nightly reconciliation, streaming pipelines for events that cannot wait until morning. Schema design, deduplication, API integration and error handling are engineered for observability: when a source shifts format at 2 a.m., someone gets a signal, not a silent gap in tomorrow's dashboard. We work across cloud and hybrid environments common in Canadian enterprise and scale-up contexts. Automation handles routine transforms; humans review exceptions and approve schema migrations that affect downstream retrieval indexes or predictive analytics models.
Indicative project range: C$65,000–C$185,000
No. 03
Data Platforms, Warehousing & Quality
A warehouse nobody trusts is worse than no warehouse at all. We design layered models — staging, conformed dimensions, semantic views — with data quality checks at each boundary. Duplicate detection, null-rate monitoring, referential integrity tests and drift alerts keep the single source of truth honest after go-live. Platform choices depend on your existing stack, budget and team skills; we document trade-offs rather than prescribing a religion. Fine-tuning warehouse performance for inference-heavy workloads or computer vision feature stores is scoped when relevant. Production deployment includes rollback paths and documentation your internal team can maintain.
Indicative project range: C$75,000–C$220,000
Warehouse monitoring · evening review
A dashboard that reports last quarter's truth is not a decision tool — it is a comfort blanket.
No. 04
Analytics, Dashboards & Decision Tools
We build analytics surfaces people reach for without being told — executive summaries, operational drill-downs, exception queues and export paths for auditors who still want a CSV. Natural language processing (NLP) enrichment and predictive analytics layers are added when the underlying data supports them; we say plainly when it does not. Dashboard design follows how decisions actually get made in your organization, not how a generic BI template suggests. Model evaluation metrics for forecasting components are documented with confidence intervals, not false precision. Every visualization ties back to governed warehouse models so the number on screen matches the number in the pipeline.
Indicative project range: C$45,000–C$140,000
No. 05
AI-Ready Data & Retrieval Foundations (RAG)
Generative AI and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems fail quietly when the corpus underneath them is messy. We forge AI-ready data layers: chunking strategies, embedding pipelines, metadata contracts, evaluation harnesses and prompt engineering guardrails for your LLM application. Inference latency, citation accuracy and hallucination rates are measured against a benchmark question set from your domain — with a human review step for high-stakes answers. This is foundation work for applied AI deployments, not a finished chatbot product you subscribe to. We integrate with your chosen models and keep retrieval indexes synchronized as source documents change.
Indicative project range: C$55,000–C$175,000
No. 06
DataOps, Monitoring & Responsible-AI Governance
Shipping is not the finish line. DataOps retainers cover pipeline monitoring, model monitoring for drift, incident response playbooks and governance updates as regulations or internal policies evolve. We maintain runbooks, SLA dashboards and alert routing so your team knows who answers when batch latency spikes before the Monday forecast meeting. Responsible-AI governance includes documentation for audit trails, bias checks where relevant and human-in-the-loop workflows for automated decisions. MLOps patterns for data-centric systems — feature freshness, training data lineage — are included when machine learning models depend on your warehouse. Retainers are monthly with defined hours and change control.
Retainer from C$6,500/month · Incident response scoped separately
Late pipeline review · Vancouver studio
Book a data assessment
Tell us which discipline fits your current seam — or start with discovery if you are not sure yet.