Every conversation about project recovery eventually reaches the same question, usually from someone who has to defend the number to a board: "What's this going to cost?"
Here's a straight answer, not a "it depends" that goes nowhere.
The Short Version
Recovery engagements at AgileMinds typically run 2–4 months and are priced against a fixed scope, not an open-ended retainer. You get a number before you commit. Our initial free two-week assessment, not a guess based on a sales call.
The variables that move that number are predictable. Here's what they are.
What Drives Recovery Cost Up
- Scope ambiguity. Projects that have drifted from their original brief take longer to diagnose before anyone can start stabilising them.
- Stakeholder fragmentation. More sponsors with conflicting priorities means more time spent realigning before delivery work can resume.
- Team disengagement. A burnt-out or distrustful team needs rebuilding, not just redirecting, that's a different (and longer) piece of work than a team that's simply been under-led.
- How late the call came. This is the biggest one. A project flagged at the first sign of trouble costs a fraction of one discovered three months past its warning signs.
What Drives It Down
- Early engagement. The 90-day window matters; projects flagged inside it are cheaper and faster to recover than ones left to compound.
- A single clear sponsor. One decision-maker who can authorise a replan quickly removes weeks of back-and-forth.
- Existing documentation. Even messy documentation is faster to work from than none.
Why We Don't Price Off a Sales Call
Most consultancies quote project recovery after a quick sales conversation. That number is a guess dressed up as a quote, and it's usually wrong in the client's favour until change requests start.
We do it differently. The free assessment is an initial 1-hour call with a senior practitioner, we take time to understand your actual project. By the end, you get a fixed scope and a fixed price, based on what we've actually found, not what we assumed going in.
A Rough Sense of Scale
Without knowing your specific programme, we won't put a number on a page that doesn't apply to your situation; that's the kind of vague marketing promise we'd rather not make. What we can tell you: across 23 years and £2B+ in delivered programmes, recovery engagements have consistently cost a fraction of the value being protected. A £4m programme recovered in 12 weeks, for one client, cost a low single-digit percentage of the programme's total value. The assessment tells you your number, not an industry average.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the free assessment really free? Yes. One day of senior practitioner time, no fee, no obligation, no commitment to engage us further afterwards. It's how we scope recovery projects accurately instead of guessing.
How does project recovery pricing compare to letting the project continue as-is? The comparison that matters isn't recovery cost versus zero, it's recovery cost versus the cost of a project that fails outright, plus whatever was already spent getting it there. Most boards find the maths isn't close.
Do you charge more once you're already embedded and see the full picture? No. The price is fixed after the assessment, based on the scope we find, not renegotiated once we're inside the work.
The First Conversation Is Always Free
Get a real number, not a guess. We provide one day of senior practitioner time, free, no obligation.
Book Your Free Project Assessment.
