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Fractional AI Architecture · Richmond, VA

AI strategy that ends in working software.

I'm Will Cassell — a former SVP of data science & analytics who now builds AI systems hands-on. I find the business problem first, then assemble the AI, data, and automation stack that actually solves it.

Duration 3
Weeks

Fixed engagement length

Fixed fee · from $7,500
Scoped up front

No open-ended billing

Scope 1
Department

One process, end to end

Retainer 2
Seats

Clients at a time

Fig. 00 — The terms, at a glance

01 — The Gap

Strategy firms hand you a deck. Dev shops hand you code. Neither owns the outcome.

Companies keep getting caught between the two: advice with no implementation, or implementation with no business judgment. The work that moves a P&L needs both halves in one head.

Who owns the outcome Fig. 01
Capability coverage by provider type. Strategy firms cover advice only; dev shops cover implementation only; this practice covers advice, implementation, and ownership of the outcome.
Provider Advice Implementation Owns the outcome
Strategy firmsDeck, no build Yes No No
Dev shopsCode, no judgment No Yes No
This practiceBoth halves, one head Yes Yes Yes
Read: a filled dot is coverage. The gap is the empty column every incumbent shares — ownership of the result.

The operator half 50%

Years running data science and analytics organizations at the SVP level — budgets, org change, vendor selection, and the politics of getting new systems adopted rather than shelved.

The builder half 50%

Daily, hands-on work with LLM agents, voice systems, data pipelines, and workflow automation. When I recommend something, it's because I've already built a version of it.

02 — The Engagement

The AI Workflow Audit

A fixed-fee, three-week engagement on one department or process. You leave with a ranked roadmap and a working pilot of the top opportunity — not a recommendation to go build one.

AI Workflow Audit Fixed fee · From $7,500
Week 1 · Map

Discovery

Interviews with your team and a workflow map of the target process: where time, money, and errors actually accumulate.

Week 2 · Build

Rank & pilot

Every opportunity scored on ROI against feasibility — then I build a working pilot of the one at the top of the list.

Week 3 · Decide

Readout

A 90-day roadmap, the live pilot demo, and a decision-ready business case your leadership can act on immediately.

Every consultancy delivers a deck. This one also delivers a thing that already works.
Duration · 3 weeks Scope · one department or process Format · remote, with on-site option
The three-week schedule Fig. 02
Three-week audit schedule as a Gantt chart Week 1 is the Map/Discovery phase. Rank and build the pilot spans late week 1 through week 2. The pilot goes live at the end of week 2, followed by the week 3 Decide/Readout phase. Discovery 01 · MAP Rank & pilot 02 · BUILD BUILD WORKING PILOT Readout 03 · DECIDE PILOT LIVE
Fig. 02 — The build lane (teal) is the differentiator: a working pilot ships inside the three weeks, not after them.
ROI × feasibility scoring Fig. 03
Opportunities scored on ROI against feasibility Each opportunity is plotted by feasibility on the horizontal axis and ROI on the vertical axis. The opportunity in the high-feasibility, high-ROI quick-win quadrant is selected to build as the pilot. Points shown are illustrative. ◆ PILOT
Fig. 03 — Illustrative scoring; real points come from your workflow map. I build the one in the quick-win quadrant.

03 — Recent Builds

Systems I've built recently

B·01

Outbound voice interview agents

AI agents that place real phone calls and run structured interviews end-to-end — transcripts, scoring, and follow-ups landing in a database, no human dialing.

B·02

Field-staff assistants over operational data

Conversational assistants that sit on top of an organization's live job and operations data, so frontline staff get answers without hunting through systems.

B·03

Public-records intelligence pipelines

Data pipelines that turn messy public records into ranked, decision-ready intelligence — the kind of signal a sales or underwriting team can act on weekly.

B·04

Multi-system automation & telemetry

Agent-driven automation across machines and services, with dashboards that make usage, cost, and reliability visible at a glance.

Live demos of each shown on intro calls.

04 — After the Audit

Fractional AI Architect, on retainer

When the audit surfaces more than one thing worth building, I stay on as your fractional AI lead — owning the roadmap, building the pilots, selecting the vendors, and upskilling your team on a monthly retainer.

I hold two retainer seats at a time. That constraint is the point: you get a senior operator's attention, not a bench of juniors.

Retainer capacity

2 seats, total. Senior attention by design — never a bench of juniors.

05 — About

Will Cassell

For 25+ years I led data science and analytics at scale — most recently as SVP of Data Science & Engineering at RDSolutions, and for fourteen-plus years a Director at Capital One, where I ran its bank-fraud innovation team. Those are the years where you learn that technology fails for organizational reasons more often than technical ones.

Now I work as an independent architect because I like the craft: finding the business problem, then personally assembling the AI, analytics, and automation blocks that solve it. CR Tech Lab is the practice that work lives under.

  • 25+ years in data & analytics
  • SVP, Data Science & Engineering — RDSolutions
  • 14+ yrs at Capital One · fraud & decision science
  • $20M+ annual fraud loss prevented
  • Hands-on LLM, agent & voice engineering
  • Richmond, Virginia
Full background on LinkedIn ↗

06 — Contact

Working on something like this?

Tell me what's slow, manual, or opaque in your operation. If there's a fit, we'll scope an audit in one call — and if there isn't, I'll tell you that too.

Book a call