What I look for before I trust an Ai tool with real work
Government research found only a quarter of UK businesses adopting Ai have any practice for managing the risks. Here are the five questions I ask before a tool touches real work.
Tommy Findlay// Chartered Engineer · Governed Ai
LAYER: CASE
ISO 9001 · 14001 · 45001 · 27001 · 42001CEng · LSS Black BeltSWIM · BIKE · RUN
PRECISION ISN’T AN ACCIDENT.
It’s engineered, governed, and maintained.
GOVERNED AiSYSTEMISATIONPOSITIVE IMPACTENDURANCE
Scroll to open the movement.
RATE +4.8 s/dayJEWELS 27BALANCE: TRUE
Process before technology. Digitisation before Ai.
Ai bolted onto a broken business doesn’t transform it. It scales the dysfunction.
I’m Tommy Findlay. Chartered Engineer, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and founder of iS3. I help UK businesses turn scattered tools and data into governed, Ai-enabled operating systems.
Trusted by
Most Ai strategies are backwards
Businesses buy the technology first and hope a transformation follows. It rarely does. What compounds instead is the slow accumulation of small missed opportunities: the process nobody mapped, the data nobody digitised, the decision nobody owns.
I work the other way round. Fix the foundations, digitise what matters, then apply Ai where it genuinely earns its keep. Governance is not the brake on any of that. It is the accelerator.
Read my approach- years across engineering, quality and Ai
- 20+
- measured productivity uplift for a client, 2025
- 200%+
- product variants run through one governed Ai workflow I built
- 9,000+
- granted US patents in gas turbine coatings, as a named inventor
- 2
- ISO management systems in practice: 9001, 14001, 45001, 27001, 42001
- 5
- MBA, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, change and project management
- CEng
Ways to work with me
Three routes in
Consulting and implementation
Readiness assessments, governed Ai systems and operating system builds, delivered through my consultancy iS3.
Explore iS3Training and apprenticeships
Ai training grounded in real operations, through the ClearQuality partnership.
How it worksSpeaking
Keynotes, workshops and panels on governed Ai and engineering-led improvement.
Book Tommy to speakHow ready is your business for Ai?
Get your free readiness score in ten minutes.
Projects and organisations I’m involved with and support
The ecosystem
My consultancy. Governance-led Ai and systems for UK SMEs.
is3.co.uk
- iS3My consultancy. Governance-led Ai and systems for UK SMEs.
- Ai Readiness AssessmentTen minutes to an honest score of how ready your business is for Ai.
- Governance Assessment and BlueprintWhere you stand against the standards, and the blueprint to fix what matters first.
- CertiqaThe governance platform I’m building. It turns ISO compliance into live, audit-ready evidence.
- TomCRMThe CRM I co-founded, behind dozens of small UK service businesses.
- TomPilotA Slack-native Ai agent for strategic execution.
- HopDeskTurns pubs and cafes into daytime workspaces for remote workers, and I’m its CTO.
- Beyond the FileMy wife Kirsty’s safeguarding consultancy.
Overviews to download
Two-page summaries you can read now or share with your team.
- iS3: governed Ai overviewHow iS3 lifts productivity with governed Ai: find the gaps, build the foundation, then add Ai safely.
- Certiqa overviewHow Certiqa turns ISO compliance into live, audit-ready evidence. In live testing ahead of launch.
Thinking
Latest writing
Building in public versus building in private: what I actually do
Buffer doubled its job applications by publishing every salary in 2013. Thirteen years on, a capable model can clone your product from a blog post. Why I now split what I share.
Why I write my own rules before I let a cheaper model do the work
Model prices have collapsed, and the temptation is to hand work straight to the cheapest one that can do it. Here is why I write the rulebook first, and what actually goes in it.
Speaking
An engineer’s take on the Ai transition
How ready is your business for Ai?
Get your free readiness score in ten minutes.