System Fieldbase
Team gathered around a table during a working session

Method

From column headings to a marked-up pack

This page is the working method for a System Fieldbase commission. It is also the custom page we send people who want to know what happens between the scoping call and the briefing day.

The method below is the spine of the [workforce planning commission](/services/workforce-planning-commission/). Shorter studies skip a step; they do not invent a different religion.

  1. Scoping call

    Forty-five minutes. We want the question the board or committee actually asked, the date of the meeting, the sites in play, and who owns the extract. You do not need a brief in house style. You need those four things.

  2. Column heading glance

    Send headings only if you prefer — no personal data. We say whether the file will bear a leaver map, an establishment reconciliation, or neither until someone spends a month cleaning. This is the point at which we sometimes tell you not to hire us yet.

  3. Instruction and deposit

    A short letter of instruction, the day-count range, and a one-third deposit. Work does not start on a handshake in a corridor.

  4. Working session one

    Tenure bands, which leavers count as voluntary, the site list, and the grade list finance will recognise. If HR and finance disagree here, we write both positions into the pack rather than average them.

  5. Draft pack

    Printed pagination, figure numbers, assumption list. Charts are drawn for a table, not for a corridor screen. You get a factual-correction round: wrong site names, missing cost centres. You do not get a round that puts the company-wide rate back on the cover.

  6. Working session two

    Finance tests the replacement-cost lines. Operational leads test the scenarios. We mark the pages that will change.

  7. Briefing day

    Up to six hours. The pack is on paper. Disputed lines are annotated in the room. A revised page follows within a week if we marked one.

## What you prepare A named file owner. A leave-reason dictionary if you have one. The committee date. Permission to speak to finance as well as HR — a study that only HR has seen will be rebuilt in the meeting anyway. ## What we will not do in this method We will not drop a live charting product into your network. We will not train your team on software. We will not facilitate a culture workshop. If you need those, another kind of firm should lead and we should not. When you are ready for a date, [request a scoping call](/contact/) or skim the [commission list](/services/).