I find what slows your operations team down, and build the fix inside your Microsoft 365.

I’m David McMillan, a forward deployed engineer for mid-sized UK and European firms. I spend a week with your teams finding the workflows that cost you the most, then six weeks shipping governed AI and automation to fix them. Everything a Build ships runs in your own tenant. You work with me alone, from the first interview to the handover.

Book a 30-minute call about the work Email dm@bigbadbird.ai

Start with the Workflow Diagnostic: five working days for £4,800 (€5,500).

Based: Lisbon, UK hours
On site: Anywhere in the UK and Europe
Works: Alone, no handoffs
Rev: F · 14.10.2026

How the weeks run

Workflow Diagnostic 5 working days, 3 on site Week 1

Embedded Build, Wave 1 6 weeks, in your tenant Weeks 2 to 7

Run and Improve Monthly, 3-month minimum After the Build, every month

This is the fastest the weeks can run. You choose when the Build starts, and whether Run and Improve follows it. Start the Build within 30 days and the whole Diagnostic fee comes off its price.

1 · End of week 1: The waves map, the plain-English summary for directors, the technical note for IT with the exact access list, and a clickable prototype of the top fix.
2 · End of week 7: Wave 1 in production in your tenant, the handover documents, and a named person who can switch it off.

Marlowe & Hythe Interiors

Waves map, from a Workflow Diagnostic

A worked example for a firm that does not exist.

Workflow	Wave
Tender return packs assembled by hand from drawings, specifications and pricing schedules A	Wave 1
Operation and maintenance manuals compiled from subcontractor emails at handover	Wave 1
Site photos renamed and filed into project folders	Wave 1
Variation approvals chased by email B	Wave 2
The monthly directors’ report, built from three spreadsheets	Wave 2
A chatbot for the whole company C	Parked

A Wave 1 is the work a six-week build ships into production in your tenant.
B Wave 2 is the next build, if you choose to run one.
C Parked means recorded, not scheduled and not promised.

What I do

The work: Filing, document generation, approvals, chasing and reporting that run on email, spreadsheets, SharePoint folders and copy-paste between systems.
Where it runs: Inside your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant.
Who signs it off: Your COO, operations director or MD buys it, and your IT director approves it. Each gets a document written for them.

How an engagement runs

Workflow Diagnostic5 working days: £4,800 (€5,500)Three days of interviews on site, then a ranked map of your work sorted into Wave 1, Wave 2 and Parked, a plain-English summary for directors, a technical note for IT with the exact access list, and a clickable prototype of the top fix. The whole fee is credited against the Build if it starts within 30 days.
Embedded Build6 weeks: £24,000 (€28,000) per waveOne wave of the map shipped into production in your tenant, with audit logging, approval gates, cost caps, a named person who can switch it off, and handover documents. Paid half at the start and half on acceptance.
Run and ImproveMonthly, 3-month minimum: £3,500 (€4,000) a monthMonitoring, fixes, one improvement release a month, and a response within one working day.

If your firm is regulated, start with Governed AI Deployment, the practice I run for regulated firms.

Safety packs from one row of a sheet

I built and piloted a generator that turns one row of a UK fit-out contractor’s project sheet into a full RAMS pack, with no language model in the path.

Read the case study

was ~~Copied by hand from the project sheet~~ now Generated by ticking one row of the Smartsheet

For your IT director

Your IT director gets a technical note with the exact access a Build needs, item by item, and what I don’t ask for. These are the rules it follows.

Your tenant: The work runs in an Azure subscription in your tenant, billed to you. You hold Owner. I hold Contributor on one resource group.
Sign-in: Each piece of work gets its own app registration, and you grant the admin consent. I don’t ask for Global Admin.
Mail: A service that reads mail reads one shared mailbox, and an Exchange application access policy keeps it there.
SharePoint: I ask to own the one site the work lives on, and to read the libraries that already hold your policies and templates. A service that writes there gets that site only (Sites.Selected).
Secrets: Kept in a key vault in your resource group and read by a managed identity, never written into code or email.
Spend: A monthly budget alert, with a cap you set.
Off switch: A named person on your side can stop it without me.
Approval: Anything sent out, and any write beyond the one you agreed, waits for a named person.

From the Lab

governeddeployment.ai
Live Shipped 30.09.2026
A fixed-price practice for deploying governed AI in regulated firms. Its Evidence Readiness Check runs in your browser, and your answers never leave the page.
LoudBird
Prototype Started 10.08.2026
An AI visibility product, in build.
bigbadbird.music
Live Shipped 05.05.2026
Free tools for musicians, built alone. AI Music Newsletter covered it two days after it went live.

David McMillan

After early work in Durban, I was a contract developer in London, then ran Lab19 Digital, a London web agency, for eight years. In 2021 I founded Kujira, a decentralised finance protocol. When Terra collapsed in May 2022, I led Kujira’s rebuild as a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain, launched to mainnet in six weeks. In 2024 I stepped back from day-to-day leadership to return to hands-on building in applied AI. Since September 2024 I’ve worked independently, trading as BigBadBird.

More about me

Start with a call

The call takes 30 minutes. I ask how the work moves today, not which tools you use.