Capability moved faster than intervention.
AI systems are becoming more capable. Organisations are becoming more dependent on automation. Human oversight only matters if intervention remains possible.
Intervene's methodology has been informed through collaboration and professional challenge from both Nicholas Ryman-Tubb and Joanna Michalska. Professor Ryman-Tubb's academic expertise has helped shape the corpus governance principles underpinning AGDA, while Dr Michalska's experience in risk governance, organisational resilience, and regulated financial services has provided practical challenge and validation throughout the methodology's development.
Most organisations can evidence governance. Far fewer can prove they can intervene in time.
My background spans more than three decades across technology, systems architecture, digital products, payments, operational systems and organisational risk, including co-founding the Institute of Financial Innovation in Transactions and Security (IFTS).
Across that work, the same pattern kept appearing: controls, reporting and governance structures existed, but effective intervention did not. Problems were detected too late, escalation stalled, decisions drifted and ownership became unclear.
Over time, these observations were refined through extensive discussion, challenge and collaboration with trusted colleagues, including Professor Nicholas Ryman-Tubb of the University of Surrey, a long-standing mentor and personal friend whose work in risk, governance and financial systems helped shape many of the questions that ultimately became AGDA™. Additional insight was provided through collaboration with Dr Joanna Michalska, whose academic and practitioner background in risk management contributed valuable perspectives on governance, accountability and organisational decision-making.
The emergence of AI has made this gap significantly more consequential. Systems can act faster, affect more people and create outcomes that become increasingly difficult to reverse. Regulators are placing greater emphasis on effective human oversight, while boards need confidence that intervention remains possible before the window closes.
That challenge became the foundation of AGDA™. Rather than assessing whether controls exist on paper, AGDA™ measures Intervention Readiness: whether an organisation can detect, escalate, decide and intervene within the time available. The result is a deterministic, board-ready verdict supported by a signed regulator bundle and cryptographic attestation.
Today, through Intervene, I work with organisations that need a clear answer to a difficult question:
Can you stop it in time?
Because when the answer matters most, assumptions are not enough.
The operating commitments behind the instrument.
Operating constraints, codified into how we accept work, how we calibrate, what we will and will not deliver.
-
Independent judgement.
No vendor affiliation, no referral fees, no co-marketing. We do not implement what we recommend.
-
Published methodology.
Theses, catalogues, corpus governance and rater protocols are public and citeable. Populated-corpus and outcome-validation evidence is supplied separately.
-
Verifiable computation.
Formal AGDA™ SEDI assessment verdicts carry Ed25519 attestation. Inputs and outputs are hashed. An audit committee can verify without contacting us.
-
Refusal of false control.
If the evidence does not support green, the engine will not produce green. Findings the client did not want, in writing, before the regulator does.
Where the category is most urgent.
Three primary sectors. Two by invitation. Some we deliberately do not serve.
-
UK-regulated financial services.
Banks, asset managers, insurers under PRA / FCA jurisdiction with material automated decision systems.
-
EU high-risk AI operators.
Annex III high-risk systems under the EU AI Act, where human oversight must be capable of intervention.
-
Critical national infrastructure.
Energy, water, telecoms, transport. Operators where intervention failure compounds across dependency chains.
-
Healthcare systems.
Clinical decision support and diagnostic AI. By invitation, where independence from device vendors can be guaranteed.
-
Defence & intelligence.
Autonomous decision systems and human-on-the-loop frameworks. With appropriate clearances and engagement letters.
Consumer internet, enterprise productivity, B2B SaaS, advertising tech. Not because the work is unimportant, but because Intervene's methodology, corpus governance and rater protocol are designed for regulated, board-accountable systems.
What we are not.
About the practice, not the product. (For product-category boundaries, see What AGDA™ is not on Services.) Good practices occupy the adjacent ground. Knowing the difference avoids procurement confusion later.
-
Not a compliance dashboard.
Compliance tools handle evidence management. We measure whether intervention capability holds under stress.
-
Not a Big-4 advisory.
No leveraged teams, no slide decks, no implementation arm. Formal SEDI assessments include a signed regulator bundle.
-
Not a policy-writing practice.
We do not draft your automation policy. We measure whether the controls behind it produce what the policy claims.
-
Not a model-testing lab.
Red-team labs test models. We test whether the chain around the model can act on what the lab finds.
-
Not an implementation partner.
No standing-up of controls, no platform integration, no runbook ops. Remediation belongs to you or someone else.
-
Not a safety research practice.
Operational, not philosophical. A verdict on a specific system, not a paper on risk in general.
The question returns to the same place.
Can you stop it in time? See the evidence format before opening a commercial conversation.