How do you staff a nine-week controls review?

What does the statement of work give you?

Three fields, and they are separate on purpose. Roles: one partner, one senior, two associates. Allocations: 10%, 40%, 60% and 60%. Duration: 9 weeks. A plan is the three read together. A nine-week plan does not authorise unlimited hours, and a 60% allocation does not say which associate.

The Orrin statement of work also says what the work is. The deliverables are an agreed process inventory, a controls testing summary and a prioritised improvement memo. It is not an audit opinion and it is not a tax engagement. Scope is confirmed in week one and the engagement partner reviews before the final memo.

What does a capacity check confirm?

That named people have the allocated time in the allocated weeks. My job before the review starts is to put a name against each role, confirm that each named person's other commitments leave the room the plan assumes, and record that confirmation.

On the Orrin matter that step is in progress. The plan is agreed; the named allocations are being confirmed before the team is committed. That order is deliberate. A plan with roles but no names is a plan the firm has not yet promised.

Why not just book the roster?

Because the firm has more capacity than the handful of people a visitor meets in our demo workspace, and because people are not interchangeable at the point of allocation. A senior with 40% on Orrin and a prior commitment in the middle of the engagement needs a different plan, or a different senior. The check finds that before the client is told a date.

Why is an allocation not permission to expand the work?

Because an allocation is a plan for the agreed scope, not a budget to be spent. When Orrin Marine asks for extra controls testing, the honest answer has four parts. Acknowledge the request. Cite the agreed inventory and the plan. Say what would change: more testing means more weeks or more allocation, and someone has to confirm that capacity exists. Then route a written scope change with the capacity check attached.

Our statement of work says it plainly: testing beyond the agreed inventory needs a written scope change. The associate on the call does not accept the extension and does not refuse it. They record it and name who will answer.

How does the plan survive the engagement?

By being read again whenever something moves. A missed client interview is a recorded dependency with an owner and a follow-up date, not a reason to improvise evidence or to quietly borrow hours from another week. A proposed extension goes back to the plan, the capacity check and the client's written agreement before the team commits.

We keep the Orrin evidence inside the Orrin matter lane and we do not use anything from another client's file as evidence here. That sounds like a confidentiality rule, and it is. It is also a staffing rule: the people with time on Orrin are the people with access to Orrin.

What does good look like at the end of week one?

• Scope confirmed in writing with the client.
• Every role in the plan has a named person and a recorded capacity confirmation.
• The process inventory agreed, so "beyond the inventory" has a clear meaning.
• An owner and date for every open dependency.

If those four hold, the next eight weeks are the work. If they do not, week one is not finished.

What should an associate say when the client asks for more testing?

Something short and accurate. Acknowledge that more assurance is a reasonable thing to want. Say what the statement of work covers: the process inventory, the controls testing summary and the prioritized improvement memo, on the plan of one partner, one senior and two associates over nine weeks. Then explain that testing beyond the inventory is a change, that it will be written up with the extra time it needs, that I will check whether that capacity exists against named people, and that the engagement partner will come back in writing.

The thing not to say is yes. A yes on a call commits people who have not been asked and a fee nobody has agreed. The plan is a promise about who will be available in which week, and the only honest way to extend it is to check the names first.

Q&A

The questions people ask most about staffing from a statement of work are answered below.

Last updated 1 October 2026.